

HANDY -y 
VOLUME; 
CLASSICS^ 



IBM 



l l lH l iH8B 3 aBffl 



Hill 
I i| 

EfflSfflinmwaHSnJi': 



op 



mm 

miff 




81 EM 

■ HlffiffiH 

HhhBHI ill 

IffiimflKlrwnwIrttlH 



mm lllll 







Class "Pg *gq 
Book , /j fo 
Copyright N°_ 



C-OPYRICHT DEPOSIT. 



ONE HUNDRED BEST 
AMERICAN POEMS 




Henry W. Longfellow. 



ONE HUNDRED BEST 
AMERICAN POEMS 



SELECTED BY 



JOHN R. HOWARD 

MANAGING EDITOR OF THE LIBRARY OF "THE 
WORLD'S BEST POETRY " 



NEW YORK 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



T 



«3 



V^ 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Conies Received 

JAN 9 1906 

n Copyright Entry 
CLASS <£ XXc, No. 

/ Z 7 / fO 

COPY B. 



Copyright, 1905, 
BY THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 



PREFACE 



This grouping of American poems had its 
rise in the welcome accorded to a little volume 
entitled " The Hundred Best English Poems," 
issued by the same publishers. To select one 
hundred examples from the best work by our 
American poets, excluding all living authors, 
and avoiding an undue proportion of pieces by 
the few acknowledged to be preeminent, has 
been a puzzling although a pleasant task. Of 
course, no two editors would select the same 
hundred pieces from the sixty-four poets here 
represented. Any one familiar with our poeti- 
cal literature will miss here certain favorites, 
and perhaps would criticize some of the selec- 
tions. This is inevitable. 

It is not always the most finished art which 
expresses feelings and " thoughts that shall live 
within the general mind." Many a simple 
poem has touched the popular heart by virtue 
of some genuine emotion or idea, melodiously 
if not artistically versified ; and some of these 
will be found herein, because they have out- 



INDEX OF AUTHORS 



Arnold, George (1834- 1865). 

93. September .... 
Beers, Ethelinda Elliott (1 825-1 879). 

78. All Quiet along the Potomac 
Blood, Henry Ames (1 838-1 900). 

94. Song of the Savoyards 
Boker, George Henry (1 823-1 890). 

75. The Black Regiment . 
Boner, John Henry (1 845-1 903). 

98. Poe's Cottage at Fordham . 
Brainard, John Gardiner Calkins (i 

9. The Fall of Niagara . 
Bryant, William Cullen (1 794-1 878) 

16. Thanatopsis 

17. The Crowded Street . 

18. The Death of the Flowers . 

19. To a Waterfowl . 

20. To the Fringed Gentian 
Cary, Alice (1820-1871). 

71. Pictures of Memory . 
Cary, Phcebe (1824-1871). 

72. Nearer Home 

Cooke, Philip Pendleton (181 6-1 850) 
58. Life in the Autumn Woods 

Cooke, Rose Terry (1 826-1 892). 
80. Reve du Midi . 

ix 



796-1 



828) 



PAGE 
292 
26l 

295 
252 

306 

44 
48 

50 
53 
55 

240 
242 
186 
267 



X 



INDEX OF AUTHORS 



Cranch, Christopher Pearse (i 873-1 892). 

56. The Bobolinks . 
Dana, Richard Henry (1 787-1879). 

7. The Little Beach-bird 
Dickinson, Emily (1 830-1 886). 

88. I Never Saw a Moor . 

89. Indian Summer . 
Drake, Joseph Rodman (1 795-1 820). 

10. The American Flag 

n. The Culprit Fay {Extract) . 
D wight, Timothy ( 1752-18 17). 

2. Columbia .... 
Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1 803-1 882). 

32. To the Humble-bee 

2,Z> The Rhodora 

34. Each and All 

35. The Problem 

36. Good-by 
Freneau, Philip (1 752-1 832) 

1. The Wild Honeysuckle 
Greene, Albert Gorton (1802- 1868) 

23. The Baron's Last Banquet . 
Halleck, Fitz-Greene (1 790-1867). 

12. Joseph Rodman Drake 

13. Marco Bozzaris . 
Hayne, Paul Hamilton (1 830-1 886). 

86. Preexistence 

87. In Harbor .... 
Hoffman, Charles Fenno (1806-1884) 

28. Sparkling and Bright . 
Holland, Josiah Gilbert (1819-1881) 
60. Cradle Song (from "Bitter-sweet") 



INDEX OF AUTHORS xi 

PAGE 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell (i 809-1 894). 

49. The Chambered Nautilus 157 

50. Old Ironsides *59 

51. The Deacon's Masterpiece {The One-Hoss Shay) 160 

52. The Voiceless . . . . . f . .166 
Hovey, Richard (1 864-1 900). 

100. The Faun 311 

Howland, May Woolsey (183 2- 1864). 

91. Rest 289 

Ingalls, John James (i 833-1900). 

92. Opportunity 291 

Jackson, Helen Hunt (1 831-1885). 

90. Habeas Corpus 286 

Judson, Emily Chubbuck (181 7-1 854). 

59. Watching 191 

Key, Francis Scott (1 779-1 843). 

3. The Star-spangled Banner . . . . . 7 
Kinney, Coates (1826-1904)0 

8^. Rain on the Roof 272 

Lanier, Sidney (1842-1881). 

96. Song of the Chattahoochee .... 302 

97. A Ballad of Trees and the Master . . . 304 
Longfellow, Henry Wads worth (i 807-1 882). 

38. Hymn to the Night 120 

39. The Arsenal at Springfield 121 

40. The Fire of Driftwood 125 

41. Resignation 127 

42. Sea-weed 130 

43. The Day is Done 132 

Lowell, James Russell (1819-1891). 

62. To the Dandelion 201 

63. Rhoecus ........ 204 



xh INDEX OF AUTHORS 

PAGE 

Lowell — continued. 

64. The Present Crisis 212 

65. She Came and Went 221 

Lytle, William Haines (1 826-1 863). 

79. Antony to Cleopatra - 264 

McLellan, Isaac (1 806-1 899). 

37. New England's Dead 117 

McMaster, Guy Humphrey (i 829-1 887). 

85. Carmen Bellicosum 277 

Moore, Clement Clarke (1779-1863). 

4. A Visit from St. Nicholas 10 

Morris, George Pope (1 802-1 864). 

22. Woodman, Spare that Tree .... 60 

Osgood, Frances Sargent (181 2-1 850). 

54. Labor 172 

Percival, James Gates (1 795-1 856). 

15. The Coral Grove ...... 42 

Pinkney, Edward Coate (1 802-1 828.) 

21. A Health 57 

Poe, Edgar Allan (1 809-1 849). 

29. For Annie 85 

30. The Bells 90 

31. The Raven 95 

Read, Thomas Buchanan (1 822-1 872). 

73. Drifting 244 

74. Sheridan's Ride 248 

Ryan, Abram Joseph (1 839-1 886). 

95. Sentinel Songs ....... 299 

Sewall, Harriet Winslow (1 819-1892). 

61. Why thus Longing ? 198 

Simms, William Gilmore (1 806-1 870). 

27. The Lost Pleiad 80 



INDEX OF AUTHORS Xlll 

PAGE 

Spencer, Caroline (i 850-1 898). 

99. Living Waters 309 

Sprague, Charles (1 791-1875). 

14. The Winged Worshippers 40 

Stoddard, Richard Henry (1 825-1 903). 

81. It Never Comes Again . . . . .270 

82. The Sea 271 

Story, William Wetmore (181 9-1 895). 

69. The Violet 236 

Stowe, Harriet Beecher (181 2-1 896). 

57. Only a Year 183 

Street^ Alfred Billings (1811-1881). 

53. The Settler 168 

Taylor, Bayard (1 825-1 878). 

76. Bedouin Love-Song 256 

77. The Arab to the Palm 258 

Timrod, Henry (1 829-1 867). 

84. Dreams 275 

TUCKERMAN, HENRY THEODORE (1813-1871). 

55. To an Elm 176 

Welby, Amelia Coppuck (i 821-1852). 

70. The Old Maid 238 

Whitman, Sarah Helen (i 803-1 878). 

24. A Still Day in Autumn 66 

Whitman, Walt (1 819-1892). 

66. What is the Grass ? 223 

67. O Captain ! my Captain !..... 229 

68. Give me the Splendid Silent Sun . . .231 
Whittier, John Greenleaf (1 807-1 892). 

44. The Angel of Patience 135 

45. The Barefoot Boy 136 

46. Burns , , 141 



xiv INDEX OF AUTHORS 

PAGE 

Whittier — continued. 

47. The Reformer 147 

48. The Eve of Election 152 

Willis, Nathaniel Parker (1807-1892). 

25. Parrhasius 69 

26. Unseen Spirits 78 

Woodworth, Samuel (1 785-1 842). 

. 5. The Bucket 14 



ONE HUNDRED BEST 
AMERICAN POEMS 



>X*< 



PHILIP FRENEAU 

The Wild Honeysuckle 

Fair flower, that dost so comely grow, 

Hid in this silent, dull retreat, 
Untouched thy honied blossoms blow, 
Unseen thy little branches greet : 
No roving foot shall crush thee here, 
No. busy hand provoke a tear. 

By Nature's self in white arrayed, 
She bade thee shun the vulgar eye, 

And planted here the guardian shade, 
And sent soft waters murmuring by ; 



PHILIP FRENEAU 

Thus quietly thy summer goes, 
Thy days declining to repose. 

Smit with those charms that must decay, 

I grieve to see your future doom ; 
They died — nor were those flowers more gay, 
The flowers that did in Eden bloom ; 
Unpitying frosts and Autumn's power 
Shall leave no vestige of this flower. 

From morning suns and evening dews 

At first thy little being came ; 
If nothing once, you nothing lose, 
For when you die you are the same ; 
The space between is but an hour, 
The frail duration of a flower. 



TIMOTHY DWIGHT 
2 Columbia 

Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise, 

The queen of the world and the child of the 
skies ! 

Thy genius commands thee ; with rapture be- 
hold, 

While ages on ages thy splendors unfold. 

Thy reign is the last and the noblest of time, 

Most fruitful thy soil, most inviting thy clime ; 

Let the crimes of the East ne'er encrimson thy 
name, 

Be freedom and science and virtue thy fame. 

To conquest and slaughter let Europe aspire ; 
Whelm nations in blood, and wrap cities in fire ; 
Thy heroes the rights of mankind shall defend, 
And triumph pursue them, and glory attend. 
A world is thy realm ; for a world be thy laws 
Enlarged as thine empire, and just as thy cause ; 

3 



4 TIMOTHY DWIGHT 

On Freedom's broad basis that empire shall 

rise, 

Extend with the main, and dissolve with the 
skies, 

Fair Science her gates to thy sons shall unbar, 
And the East see thy morn hide the beams of 

her star ; 
New bards and new sages unrivalled shall soar 
To fame unextinguished when time is no more ; 
To thee, the last refuge of virtue designed, 
Shall fly from all nations the best of mankind ; 
Here, grateful to Heaven, with transport shall 

bring 
Their incense, more fragrant than odors of 

spring. 

Nor less shall thy fair ones to glory ascend, 
And genius and beauty in harmony blend ; 
The graces of form shall awake pure desire, 
And the charms of the soul ever cherish the 

fire; 
Their sweetness unmingled, their mannefs 

refined, 



TIMOTHY DWIGHT 5 

And virtue's bright image enstamped on the 

mind, 
With peace and soft rapture shall teach life to 

glow, 
And light up a smile on the aspect of woe. 

Thy fleets to all regions thy power shall display, 
The nations admire, and the ocean obey ; 
Each shore to thy glory its tribute unfold, 
And the East and the South yield their spices 

and gold. 
As the day spring unbounded thy splendor shall 

flow, 
And earth's little kingdoms before thee shall 

bow, 
While the ensigns of union, in triumph unfurled, 
Hush the tumult of war, and give peace to the 

world. 

Thus, as down a lone valley, with cedars o'er- 

spread, 
From war's dread confusion, I pensively 

strayed, — 



6 TIMOTHY DVVIGHT 

The gloom from the face of fair heaven retired ; 
The wind ceased to murmur, the thunders ex- 
pired ; 
Perfumes, as of Eden, flowed sweetly along, 
And a voice, as of angels, enchantingly sung : 
" Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise, 
The queen of the world, and the child of the 
skies ! " 



FRANCIS SCOTT KEY 

3 The Star-spangled Banner 

O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light, 
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's 

last gleaming, — 
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through 

the perilous fight 
O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gal- 
lantly streaming ! 
And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting 

in air, 
Gave proof through the night that our flag was 

still there ; 
O ! say, does that star-spangled banner yet 

wave 
O'er the land of the free, and the home of the 

brave ? 

On that shore dimly seen through the mists of 
the deep, 

7 



8 FRANCIS SCOTT KEY 

Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence 
reposes, 

What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering 
steep, 
As it fitfully blows, now conceals, now dis- 
closes ? 

Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first 
beam, 

In full glory reflected now shines on the stream ; 

'Tis the star-spangled banner; O long may it 
wave 

O'er the land of the free, and the home of the 
brave ! 

And where is that band who so vauntingly 
swore 
That the havoc of war and the battle's con- 
fusion 
A home and a country should leave us no 
more ? 
Their blood has washed out their foul foot- 
steps' pollution. 
No refuge could save the hireling and slave 



FRANCIS SCOTT KEY 9 

From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the 

grave ; 
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth 

wave 
O'er the land of the free, and the home of the 

brave. 

O ! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand 
Between their loved homes and the war's 
desolation ! 

Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the Heav'n- 
rescued land 
Praise the power that hath made and pre- 
served us a nation. 

Then conquer we must, when our cause it is 
just, 

And this be our motto — " In God is our trust" 

And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall 
wave 

O'er the land of the free, and the home of the 
brave. 



CLEMENT CLARKE MOORE 

4 A Visit from St. Nicholas 

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all 

through the house 
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse ; 
The stockings were hung by the chimney with 

care, 
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there; 
The children were nestled all snug in their 

beds, 
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their 

heads ; 
And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap, 
Had just settled our brains for a long winter's 

nap,— 
When out on the lawn there arose such a 

clatter, 
I sprang from my bed to see what was the 

matter. 

10 



CLEMENT CLARKE MOORE II 

Away to the window I flew like a flash, 
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash. 
The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow 
Gave a lustre of mid-day to objects below ; 
When what to my wondering eyes should ap- 
pear, 
But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer, 
With a little old driver, so lively and quick 
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick. 
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, 
And he whistled and shouted, and called them 

by name : 
" Now, Dasher ! now, Dancer ! now, Prancer 

and Vixen ! 
On, Comet ! on, Citpid ! on, Donder and Blitzen ! 
To the top of the porch, to the top of the wall ! 
Now dash away, dash away, dash away all ! " 
As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly, 
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the 

sky, 
So up to the house-top the coursers they flew, 
With the sleigh full of toys, — and St. Nicholas 
too. 



12 CLEMENT CLARKE MOORE 

And then in a twinkling I heard on the roof 
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof. 
As I drew in my head, and was turning 

around, 
Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a 

bound. 
He was dressed all in fur from his head to his 

foot, 
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes 

and soot ; 
A bundle of toys he had flung on his back, 
And he looked like a pedler just opening his 

pack. 
His eyes how they twinkled ! his dimples how 

merry ! 
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a 

cherry ; 
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow, 
And the beard on his chin was as white as the 

snow; 
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, 
And the smoke it encircled his head like a 

wreath ; 



CLEMENT CLARKE MOORE 13 

He had a broad face and a little round belly 
That shook, when he laughed, like a bowl full 

of jelly. 
He was chubby and plump, — a right jolly old 

elf, 
And I laughed, when I saw him, in spite of 

myself ; 
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head 
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread ; 
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his 

work, 
And filled all the stockings; then turned with 

a jerk, 
And laying his finger aside of his nose, 
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose ; 
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a 

whistle, 
And away they all flew like the down of a 

thistle. 
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of 

sight, 
11 Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good 

night ! " 



SAMUEL WOODWORTH 

5 The Bucket 

How dear to this heart are the scenes of my 
childhood, 
When fond recollection presents them to 
view ! 
The orchard, the meadow, the deep-tangled wild- 
wood, 
And every loved spot which my infancy 
knew ! 
The wide-spreading pond, and the mill that 
stood by it, 
The bridge, and the rock where the cataract 
fell, 
The cot of my father, the dairy-house nigh it ; 
And e'en the rude bucket that hung in the 
well — 
The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket, 
The moss-covered bucket which hung in the 
well. 

14 



SAMUEL WOODWORTH 1 5 

That moss-covered vessel I hailed as a treasure, 
For often at noon, when returned from the 
field, 
I found it the source of an exquisite pleasure, 
The purest and sweetest that nature can 
yield, 
How ardent I seized it, with hands that were 
glowing, 
And quick to the white-pebbled bottom it 
fell; 
Then soon, with the emblem of truth over- 
flowing, 
And dripping with coolness, it rose from the 
well — 
The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket, 
The moss-covered bucket arose from the well. 

How sweet from the green, mossy brim to 
receive it, 
As poised on the curb it inclined to my lips ! 
Not a full, blushing goblet could tempt me to 
leave it, 
The brightest that beauty or revelry sips. 



16 SAMUEL WOODWORTH 

And now, far removed from the loved habita- 
tion, 
The tear of regret will intrusively swell, 
As fancy reverts to my fathers plantation, 
And sighs for the bucket that hangs in the 
well — 
The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket, 
The moss-covered bucket that hangs in the 
well! 



JOHN PIERPONT 

6 The Pilgrim Fathers 

The Pilgrim Fathers — where are they? 

The waves that brought them o'er 
Still roll in the bay, and throw their spray 

As they break along the shore ; 
Still roll in the bay, as they rolled that day 

When the Mayflozver moored below, 
When the sea around was black with storms, 

And white the shore with snow. 

The mists, that wrapped the Pilgrim's sleep, 

Still brood upon the tide ; 
And the rocks yet keep their watch by the deep 

To stay its waves of pride. 
But the snow-white sail, that he gave to the gale, 

When the heavens looked dark, is gone, — 
As an angel's wing through an opening cloud 

Is seen, and then withdrawn. 

17 



18 JOHN PIERPONT 

The Pilgrim exile — sainted name ! 

The hill whose icy brow 
Rejoiced, when he came, in the morning's flame, 

In the morning's flame burns now. 
And the moon's cold light, as it lay that night 

On the hillside and the sea, 
Still lies where he laid his houseless head, — 

But the Pilgrim ! where is he ? 

The Pilgrim Fathers are at rest : 

When summer is throned on high, 
And the world's warm breast is in verdure drest, 

Go, stand on the hill where they lie. 
The earliest ray of the golden day, 

On that hallowed spot is cast ; 
And the evening sun, as he leaves the world, 

Looks kindly on that spot last. 

The Pilgrim spirit has not fled : 

It walks in noon's broad light; 
And it watches the bed of the glorious dead, 

With the holy stars by night. 



JOHN PIERPONT 19 

It watches the bed of the brave who have bled, 
And still guard this ice-bound shore, 

Till the waves of the bay, where the Mayflower 
lay, 
Shall foam and freeze no more. 



RICHARD HENRY DANA 

7 The Little Beach-bird 

Thou little bird, thou dweller by the sea, 
Why takest thou its melancholy voice, 
And with that boding cry 
Why o'er the waves dost fly ? 
O, rather, bird, with me 

Through the fair land rejoice ! 

Thy flitting form comes ghostly dim and pale, 
As driven by a beating storm at sea ; 
Thy cry is weak and scared, 
As if thy mates had shared 
The doom of us : thy wail, — 
What doth it bring to me ? 

Thou call'st along the sand, and haunt'st the 
surge, 
Restless and sad ; as if, in strange accord 
With the motion and the roar 
Of waves that drive to shore, 
20 



RICHARD HENRY DANA 21 

One spirit did ye urge — 
The Mystery — the Word. 

Of thousands, thou, both sepulchre and pall, 
Old Ocean ! A requiem o'er the dead 
From out thy gloomy cells 
A tale of mourning tells, — 
Tells of man's woe and fall, 
His sinless glory fled. 

Then turn thee, little bird, and take thy flight 
Where the complaining sea shall sadness 
bring 
Thy spirit never more ; 
Come, quit with me the shore, 
And on the meadows light 

Where birds for gladness sing ! 



RICHARD HENRY WILD 
8 To the Mocking-bird 



"i> 



Winged mimic of the woods ! thou motley fool ! 
Who shall thy gay buffoonery describe ? 
Thine ever ready notes of ridicule 
Pursue thy fellows still with jest and gibe. 
Wit, sophist, songster, Yorick of thy tribe, 
Thou sportive satirist of Nature's school, 
To thee the palm of scoffing we ascribe, 
Arch-mocker and mad Abbot of Misrule ! 
For such thou art by day — but all night long 
Thou pourest a soft, sweet, pensive, solemn 

strain, 
As if thou didst in this thy moonlight song 
Like to the melancholy Jacques complain, 
Musing on falsehood, folly, vice, and wrong, 
And sighing for thy motley coat again. 



22 



JOHN GARDINER CALKINS 
BRAINARD 

9 The Fall of Niagara 

The thoughts are strange that crowd into my 

brain, 
While I look upward to thee. It would seem 
As if God poured thee from his hollow hand, 
And hung his bow upon thine awful front, 
And spoke in that loud voice which seemed to 

him 
Who dwelt in Patmos for his Saviour's sake 
The sound of many waters ; and had bade 
Thy flood to chronicle the ages back, 
And notch his centuries in the eternal rocks. 

Deep calleth unto deep. And what are we, 
That hear the question of that voice sublime ? 
O, what are all the notes that ever rung 
From war's vain trumpet, by thy thundering 
side ? 

23 



24 JOHN GARDINER CALKINS BRAINARD 

Yea, what is all the riot man can make 
In his short life, to thy unceasing roar ? 
And yet, bold babbler, what art thou to Him 
Who drowned a world, and heaped the waters 

far 
Above its loftiest mountains ? — a light wave, 
That breaks, and whispers of its Maker's might. 



JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE 

10 The American Flag 

When Freedom, from her mountain height, 
Unfurled her standard to the air, 

She tore the azure robe of night, 
And set the stars of glory there ! 

She mingled with its gorgeous dyes 

The milky baldric of the skies, 

And striped its pure, celestial white 

With streakings of the morning light ; 

Then, from his mansion in the sun, 

She called her eagle-bearer down, 

And gave into his mighty hand 

The symbol of her chosen land. 

Majestic monarch of the cloud ! 

Who rear'st aloft thy regal form, 
To hear the tempest trumpings loud, 
And see the lightning lances driven, 

When strive the warriors of the storm, 

2 5 



26 JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE 

And rolls the thunder-drum of heaven, — 
Child of the sun ! to thee 'tis given 

To guard the banner of the free, 
To hover in the sulphur smoke, 
To ward away the battle stroke, 
And bid its blendings shine afar, 
Like rainbows on the cloud of war, 

The harbingers of victory ! 

Flag of the brave ! thy folds shall fly 
The sign of hope and triumph high ! 
When speaks the signal trumpet tone, 
And the long line comes gleaming on, 
Ere yet the life-blood, warm and wet, 
Has dimmed the glistening bayonet, 
Each soldier eye shall brightly turn 
To where thy sky-born glories burn, 
And, as his springing steps advance, 
Catch war and vengeance from the glance. 
And when the cannon-mouthings loud 
Heave in wild wreaths the battle shroud 
And gory sabres rise and fall 
Like shoots of flame on midnight's pall, 



JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE 27 

Then shall thy meteor glances glow, 
And cowering foes shall sink beneath 

Each gallant arm that strikes below 
That lovely messenger of death. 



Flag of the seas ! on ocean wave 
Thy stars shall glitter o'er the brave ; 
When death, careering on the gale, 
Sweeps darkly round the bellied sail, 
And frighted waves rush wildly back 
Before the broadside's reeling rack, 
Each dying wanderer of the sea 
Shall look at once to heaven and thee, 
And smile to see thy splendors fly 
In triumph o'er his closing eye. 

Flag of the free heart's hope and home, 

By angel hands to valor given ! 
Thy stars have lit the welkin dome, 

And all thy hues were born in heaven. 
Forever float that standard sheet ! 

Where breathes the foe but falls before us, 



28 JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE 

With Freedom's soil beneath our feet, 

And Freedom's banner streaming o'er us ! * 



ii The Culprit Fay 

n My visual orbs are purged from film, and, lo ! 
Instead of Anster's turnip-bearing vales, 
I see old fairy-land's miraculous show ! 

Her trees of tinsel kissed by freakish gales, 
Her ouphes that, cloaked in leaf-gold, skim the breeze, 
And fairies, swarming ..." 

Tennant's Anster Fair, 

'Tis the middle watch of a summer's night, — 
The earth is dark, but the heavens are bright ; 
Naught is seen in the vault on high 
But the moon, and the stars, and the cloudless 

sky, 
And the flood which rolls its milky hue, 
A river of light on the welkin blue. 

1 The last four lines are by Halleck. Those originally written 
by Drake were thus : — 

" And fixed as yonder orb divine, 

That saw thy bannered blaze unfurled, 
Shall thy proud stars resplendent shine, 
The guard and glory of the world." 



JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE 29 

The moon looks down on old Cro'nest ; 
She mellows the shades on his shaggy breast, 
And seems his huge gray form to throw 
In a silver cone on the wave below. 
His sides are broken by spots of shade, 
By the walnut bough and the cedar made ; 
And through their clustering branches dark 
Glimmers and dies the firefly's spark, — 
Like starry twinkles that momently break 
Through the rifts of the gathering tempest's 
rack. 

The stars are on the moving stream, 

And fling, as its ripples gently flow, 
A burnished length of wavy beam 

In an eel-like, spiral line below ; 
The winds are whist, and the owl is still ; 

The bat in the shelvy rock is hid ; 
And naught is heard on the lonely hill 
But the cricket's chirp, and the answer shrill 

Of the gauze-winged katydid; 
And the plaint of the wailing whippoorwill, 

Who moans unseen, and ceaseless sings 



30 JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE 

Ever a note of wail and woe, 

Till morning spreads her rosy wings, 
And earth and sky in her glances glow. 

Tis the hour of fairy ban and spell : 
The wood-tick has kept the minutes well ; 
He has counted them all with click and stroke 
Deep in the heart of the mountain-oak, 
And he has awakened the sentry elve 

Who sleeps with him in the haunted tree, 
To bid him ring the hour of twelve, 

And calls the fays to their revelry ; 
Twelve small strokes on his tinkling bell 
('Twas made of the white snail's pearly shell) : 
" Midnight comes, and all is well ! 
Hither, hither wing your way ! 
'Tis the dawn of the fairy-day." 
They come from beds of lichen green, 
They creep from the mullein's velvet screen ; 

Some on the backs of beetles fly 
From the silver tops of moon-touched trees, 

Where they swung in their cobweb hammocks 
high, 



JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE 31 

And rocked about in the evening breeze ; 

Some from the hum-bird's downy nest, — 
They had driven him out by elfin power, 

And, pillowed on plumes of his rainbow 
breast, 
Had slumbered there till the charmed hour ; 

Some had lain in the scoop of the rock, 
With glittering ising-stars inlaid ; 

And some had opened the four-o'clock, 
And stole within its purple shade. 

And now they throng the moonlight glade, 
Above, below, on every side,- — 

Their little minim forms arrayed 
In the tricksy pomp of fairy pride ! 

They come not now to print the lea, 
In freak and dance around the tree, 
Or at the mushroom board to sup, 
And drink the dew from the buttercup : 
A scene of sorrow waits them now, 
For an ouphe has broken his vestal vow ; 
He has loved an earthly maid, 
And left for her his woodland shade ; 



32 JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE 

He has lain upon her lip of dew, 
And sunned him in her eye of blue, 
Fanned her cheek with his wing of air, 
Played in the ringlets of her hair, 
And, nestling on her snowy breast, 
Forgot the lily-king's behest. 
For this the shadowy tribes of air 

To the elfin court must haste away : 
And now they stand expectant there, 

To hear the doom of the culprit fay. 1 

1 It is impracticable in our limited space to give the whole 
of this exquisite piece of fancy, written by Drake (within three 
days) to prove to Halleck, Cooper, and DeKay that American 
rivers might be made as romantic as the streams celebrated in 
Scottish poetry. The flavor of it, however, appears in the 
introductory stanzas here printed. 



FITZ-GREENE HALLECK 

12 On the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake 

Green be the turf above thee, 
Friend of my better days ! 

None knew thee but to love thee, 
Nor named thee but to praise. 

Tears fell, when thou wert dying, 
From eyes unused to weep, 

And long where thou art lying, 
Will tears the cold turf steep. 

When hearts whose truth was proven, 
Like thine, are laid in earth, 

There should a wreath be woven 
To tell the world their worth ; 

And I, who woke each morrow 
To clasp thy hand in mine, 

Who shared thy joy and sorrow, 
Whose weal and woe were thine ; 
33 



34 FITZ-GREENE HALLECK 

It should be mine to braid it 
Around thy faded brow, 

But I've in vain essayed it, 
And feel I cannot now. 

While memory bid me weep thee, 
Nor thoughts nor words are free, 

The grief is fixed too deeply 
That mourns a man like thee. 



13 Marco Bozzaris 

At midnight, in his guarded tent, 

The Turk was dreaming of the hour 
When Greece, her knee in suppliance bent, 

Should tremble at his power : 
In dreams, through camp and court he bore 
The trophies of a conqueror; 

In dreams his song of triumph heard ; 
Then wore his monarch's signet ring : 
Then pressed that monarch's throne — a king; 
As wild his thoughts, and gay of wing, 

As Eden's garden bird. 



FITZ-GREENE HALLECK 35 

At midnight, in the forest shades, 

Bozzaris ranged his Suliote band, 
True as the steel of their tried blades, 

Heroes in heart and hand. 
There had the Persian's thousands stood, 
There had the glad earth drunk their blood 

On old Plataea's day ; 
And now there breathed that haunted air 
The sons of sires who conquered there, 
With arm to strike, and soul to dare, 

As quick, as far as they. 

An hour passed on — the Turk awoke ; 

That bright dream was his last ; 
He woke — to hear his sentries shriek, 

"To arms! they come! the Greek! the 
Greek ! " 
He woke — to die midst flame, and smoke, 
And shout, and groan, and sabre-stroke, 

And death-shots falling thick and fast 
As lightnings from the mountain-cloud ; 
And heard, with voice as trumpet loud, 

Bozzaris cheer his band. 



36 FITZ-GREENE HALLECK 

" Strike — till the last armed foe expires ; 
Strike — for your altars and your fires ; 
Strike — for the green graves of your sires, 
God, and your native land ! " 

They fought — like brave men, long and well ; 

They piled that ground with Moslem slain; 
They conquered — but Bozzaris fell, 

Bleeding at every vein. 
His few surviving comrades saw 
His smile when rang their proud hurrah, 

And the red field was won ; 
Then saw in death his eyelids close 
Calmly, as to a night's repose, 

Like flowers at set of sun. 

Come to the bridal chamber, Death ! 

Come to the mother's, when she feels, 
For the first time, her first-born's breath ; 

Come when the blessed seals 
That close the pestilence are broke, 
And crowded cities wail its stroke ; 
Come in consumption's ghastly form, 
The earthquake shock, the ocean storm ; 



FITZ-GREENE HALLECK 37 

Come when the heart beats high and warm, 
With banquet-song, and dance, and wine ; 
And thou art terrible — the tear, 
The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier, 
And all we know, or dream, or fear 
Of agony, are thine. 

But to the hero, when his sword 

Has won the battle for the free, 
Thy voice sounds like a prophet's word ; 
And in its hollow tones are heard 

The thanks of millions yet to be. 
Come, when his task of fame is wrought — 
Come with her laurel-leaf, blood-bought — 

Come in her crowning hour — and then 
Thy sunken eye's unearthly light 
To him is welcome as the sight 

Of sky and stars to prisoned men ; 
Thy grasp is welcome as the hand 
Of brother in a foreign land ; 
Thy summons welcome as the cry 
That told the Indian isles were nigh 

To the world-seeking Genoese, 



38 F1TZ-GREENE HALLECK 

When the land-wind, from woods of palm, 
And orange-groves, and fields of balm, 
Blew o'er the Haytian seas. 

Bozzaris ! with the storied brave 

Greece nurtured in her glory's time, 
Rest thee — there is no prouder grave, 

Even in her own proud clime. 
She wore no funeral weeds for thee, 

Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume, 
Like torn branch of death's leafless tree, 
In sorrow's pomp and pageantry, 

The heartless luxury of the tomb : 
But she remembers thee as one 
Long loved and for a season gone. 
For thee her poet's lyre is wreathed, 
Her marble wrought, her music breathed ; 
For thee she rings the birthday bells ; 
Of thee her babes' first lisping tells ; 
For thine her evening prayer is said 
At palace couch, and cottage bed ; 
Her soldier, closing with the foe, 
Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow ; 



FITZ-GREENE HALLECK 39 

His plighted maiden, when she fears 
For him, the joy of her young years, 
Thinks of thy fate, and checks her tears ; 

And she, the mother of thy boys, 
Though in her eye and faded cheek 
Is read the grief she will not speak, 

The memory of her buried joys, 
And even she who gave thee birth, 
Will, by their pilgrim-circled hearth, 

Talk of thy doom without a sigh ; 
For thou art Freedom's now, and Fame's : 
One of the few, the immortal names, 

That were not born to die. 



CHARLES SPRAGUE 

14 The Winged Worshippers 1 

Gay, guiltless pair, 
What seek ye from the fields of heaven ? 

Ye have no need of prayer, 
Ye have no sins to be forgiven. 

Why perch ye here, 
Where mortals to their Maker bend ? 

Can your pure spirits fear 
The God ye never could offend ? 

Ye never knew 
The crimes for which we come to weep. 

Penance is not for you, 
Blessed wanderers of the upper deep. 

To you 'tis given 
To wake sweet Nature's untaught lays ; 



1 u Addressed to two swallows that flew into the Chauncey 

vie 

40 



Place church during divine service." 



CHARLES SPRAGUE 41 

Beneath the arch of heaven 
To chirp away a life of praise. 

Then spread each wing, 
Far, far above, o'er lakes and lands, 

And join the choirs that sing 
In yon blue dome not reared with hands. 

Or, if ye stay, 
To note the consecrated hour, 

Teach me the airy way, 
And let me try your envied power. 

Above the crowd, 
On upward wings could I but fly, 
I'd bathe in yon bright cloud, 
And seek the stars that gem the sky. 

'Twere Heaven indeed 
Through fields of trackless light to soar. 

On Nature's charms to feed, 
And Nature's own great God adore. 



JAMES GATES PERCIVAL 

15 The Coral Grove 

Deep in the wave is a coral grove, 
Where the purple mullet and goldfish rove, 
Where the sea-flower spreads its leaves of blue, 
That never are wet with falling dew, 
But in bright and changeful beauty shine, 
Far down in the green and glassy brine. 
The floor is of sand like the mountain drift, 
And the pearl-shells spangle the flinty snow ; 
From coral rocks the sea-plants lift 
Their boughs, where the tides and billows flow ; 
The water is calm and still below, 
For the winds and waves are absent there, 
And the sands are bright as the stars that glow 
In the motionless fields of upper air : 
There with its waving blade of green, 
The sea-flag streams through the silent water, 
And the crimson leaf of the dulse is seen 
To blush, like a banner bathed in slaughter : 

42 



JAMES GATES PERCIVAL 43 

There with a light and easy motion, 

The fan-coral sweeps through the clear, deep 

sea; 
And the yellow and scarlet tufts of ocean 
Are bending like corn on the upland lea : 
And life, in rare and beautiful forms, 
Is sporting amid those bowers of stone, 
And is safe, when the wrathful Spirit of storms 
Has made the top of the wave his own : 
And when the ship from his fury flies, 
Where the myriad voices of Ocean roar, 
When the wind-god frowns in the murky skies, 
And demons are waiting the wreck on shore ; 
Then far below, in the peaceful sea, 
The purple mullet and gold-fish rove, 
Where the waters murmur tranquilly, 
Through the bending twigs of the coral grove. 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 

1 6 Thanatopsis 

To him who in the love of Nature holds 
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks 
A various language ; for his gayer hours 
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile 
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides 
Into his darker musings, with a mild 
And healing sympathy, that steals away 
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts 
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight 
Over thy spirit, and sad images 
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, 
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house, 
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart ; — 
Go forth, under the open sky, and list 
To Nature's teachings, while from all around — 
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air — 
Comes a still voice : — Yet a few days, and thee 

44 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 45 

The all-beholding sun shall see no more 

In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground, 

Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears, 

Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist 

Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall 

claim 
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again, 
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up 
Thine individual being, shalt thou go 
To mix forever with the elements, 
To be a brother to the insensible rock 
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain 
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The 

oak 
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy 

mould. 
Yet not to thine eternal resting-place 
Shalt thou retire alone — nor couldst thou wish 
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down 
With patriarchs of the infant world — with 

kings, 
The powerful of the earth — the wise, the good, 
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past, 



46 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 

All in one mighty sepulchre. — The hills, 
Rock-ribbed, and ancient as the sun, — the vales 
Stretching in pensive quietness between ; 
The venerable woods — rivers that move 
In majesty, and the complaining brooks 
That make the meadows green ; and, poured 

round all, 
Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste, — 
Are but the solemn decorations all 
Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun, 
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven, 
Are shining on the sad abodes of death, 
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread 
The globe are but a handful to the tribes 
That slumber in its bosom. — Take the wings 
Of morning, and the Barcan desert pierce, 
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods 
Where rolls the Oregan, and hears no sound 
Save his own dashings — yet — the dead are 

there ; 
And millions in those solitudes, since first 
The flight of years began, have laid them down 
In their last sleep — the dead reign there alone. 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 47 

So shalt thou rest — and what if thou withdraw 
Unheeded by the living — and no friend 
Take note of thy departure ? All that breathe 
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh 
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care 
Plod on, and each one as before will chase 
His favorite phantom ; yet all these shall leave 
Their mirth and their employments, and shall 

come 
And make their bed with thee. As the long 

train 
Of ages glide away, the sons of men, 
The youth in life's green spring, and he who 

goes 
In the full strength of years, matron, and maid, 
And the sweet babe, and the gray-headed 

man, — 
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side, 
By those who in their turn shall follow them. 

So live, that when thy summons comes to 
join 
The innumerable caravan, that moves 



48 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 

To that mysterious realm, where each shall take 
His chamber in the silent halls of death, 
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, 
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and 

soothed 
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave 
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. 



17 The Crowded Street 

Let me move slowly through the street, 
Filled with an ever-shifting train, 

Amid the sound of steps that beat 

The murmuring walks like autumn rain. 

How fast the flitting figures come ! 

The mild, the fierce, the stony face ; 
Some bright with thoughtless smiles, and some 

Where secret tears have left their trace. 

They pass — to toil, to strife, to rest ; 
To halls in which the feast is spread ; 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 49 

To chambers where the funeral guest 
In silence sits beside the dead. 

• 
And some to happy homes repair, 

Where children, pressing cheek to cheek,* 

With mute caresses shall declare 

The tenderness they cannot speak. 

And some, who walk in calmness here, 
Shall shudder as they reach the door 

Where one who made their dwelling dear, 
Its flower, its light, is seen no more. 

Youth, with pale cheek and slender frame, 
And dreams of greatness in thine eye ! 

Goest thou to build an early name, 
Or early in the task to die ? 

Keen son of trade, with eager brow ! 

Who is now fluttering in thy snare ? 
Thy golden fortunes, tower they now, 

Or melt the glittering spires in air ? 

Who of this crowd to-night shall tread 
The dance till daylight gleam again ? 



50 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 

Who sorrow o'er the untimely dead ? 
Who writhe in throes of mortal pain ? 

• 
Some, famine-struck, shall think how long 

The cold dark hours, how slow the light ! 

And some, who flaunt amid the throng, 

Shall hide in dens of shame to-night. 

Each, where his tasks or pleasures call, 
They pass, and heed each other not. 

There is who heeds, who holds them all, 
In His large love and boundless thought. 

These struggling tides of life that seem 
In wayward, aimless course to tend, 

Are eddies of the mighty stream 
That rolls to its appointed end. 



1 8 The Death of the Flowers 

The melancholy days are come, the saddest of 
the year, 

Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and mead- 
ows brown and sear. 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 51 

Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the with- 
ered leaves lie dead ; 

They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the 
rabbit's tread. 

The robin and the wren are flown, and from 
the shrubs the jay, 

And from the wood-top calls the crow, through 
all the gloomy day. 

Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, 

that lately sprang and stood 
In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous 

sisterhood ? 
Alas ! they all are in their graves, the gentle 

race of flowers 
Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and 

good of ours. 
The rain is falling where they lie, but the cold 

November rain, 
Calls not, from out the gloomy earth, the lovely 

ones again. 

The wind-flower and the violet, they perished 
long ago, 



52 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 

And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid 

the summer glow ; 
But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster 

in the wood, 
And the yellow sun-flower by the brook in 

autumn beauty stood, 
Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, 

as falls the plague on men, 
And the brightness of their smile was gone, 

from upland, glade, and glen. 

And now, when comes the calm mild day, as 

still such days will come, 
To call the squirrel and the bee from out their 

winter home ; 
When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, 

though all the trees are still, 
And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of 

the rill, 
The south wind searches for the flowers whose 

fragrance late he bore, 
And sighs to find them in the wood and by the 

stream no more. 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 53 

And then I think of one who in her youthful 

beauty died, 
The fair, meek blossom that grew up and faded 

by my side ; 
In the cold moist earth we laid her, when the 

forest cast the leaf, 
And we wept that one so lovely should have a 

life so brief : 
Yet not unmeet it was that one, like that young 

friend of ours, 
So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with 

the flowers. 

19 To a Waterfowl 

Whither, 'midst falling dew, 
While glow the heavens with the last steps of 

day, 
Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou 
pursue 

Thy solitary way ? 

Vainly the fowler's eye 
Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, 



54 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 

As, darkly painted on the crimson sky, 
Thy figure floats along. 

Seek'st thou the plashy brink 
Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, 
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink 

On the chafed ocean side ? 

There is a Power whose care 
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast, 
The desert and illimitable air — 

Lone wandering, but not lost. 

All day thy wings have fanned, 
At that far height, the cold thin atmosphere, 
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, 

Though the dark night is near, 

And soon that toil shall end ; 
Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, 
And scream among thy fellows ; reeds shall 
bend, 

Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest. 

Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven 
Hath swallowed up thy form ; yet, on my heart 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 55 

Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, 
And shall not soon depart. 

He who, from zone to zone, 
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain 

flight, 
In the long way that I must tread alone 
Will lead my steps aright. 



20 To the Fringed Gentian 

Thou blossom bright with autumn dew, 
And colored with the heaven's own blue, 
That openest, when the quiet light 
Succeeds the keen and frosty night. 

Thou comest not when violets lean 

O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen, 

Or columbines, in purple dressed, 

Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest. 

Thou waitest late, and com'st alone, 
When woods are bare and birds are flown, 



56 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 

And frosts and shortening days portend 
The aged year is near his end. 

Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye 
Look through its fringes to the sky, 
Blue — blue — as if that sky let fall 
A flower from its cerulean wall. 

I would that thus, when I shall see 
The hour of death draw near to me, 
Hope, blossoming within my heart, 
May look to heaven as I depart 



EDWARD COATE PINKNEY 

A Health 

I fill this cup to one made up 

Of loveliness alone, 
A woman, of her gentle sex 
• The seeming paragon ; 
To whom the better elements 

And kindly stars have given 
A form so fair, that, like the air, 

'Tis less of earth than heaven. 



Her every tone is music's own, 
Like those of morning birds, 

And something more than melody 
Dwells ever in her words ; 

The coinage of her heart are they, 

And from her lips each flows, 

57 



58 EDWARD COATE PINKNEY 

As one may see the burdened bee 
Forth issue from the rose. 

Affections are as thoughts to her, 

The measures of her hours ; 
Her feelings have the fragrancy, 

The freshness of young flowers ; 
And lovely passions, changing oft, 

So fill her, she appears 
The image of themselves by turns, — 

The idol of past years ! 

Of her bright face one glance will trace 

A picture on the brain, 
And of her voice in echoing hearts 

A sound must long remain ; 
But memory, such as mine of her, 

So very much endears, 
When death is nigh my latest sigh 

Will not be life's, but hers. 

I fill this cup to one made up 
Of loveliness alone, 



EDWARD COATE PINKNEY 59 

A woman, of her gentle sex 

The seeming paragon. 
Her health ! and would on earth there stood 

Some more of such a frame, 
That life might be all poetry, 

And weariness a name. 



GEORGE POPE MORRIS 

22 Woodman, Spare that Tree 

Woodman, spare that tree ! 

Touch not a single bough ! 
In youth it sheltered me, 

And I'll protect it now. 
'Twas my forefather's hand 

That placed it near his cot ; 
There, woodman, let it stand, 

Thy axe shall harm it not. 

That old familiar tree, 

Whose glory and renown 
Are spread o'er land and sea — 

And wouldst thou hew it down? 
Woodman, forbear thy stroke! 

Cut not its earth-bound ties ; 
Oh, spare that aged oak 

Now towering to the skies ! 
60 



GEORGE POPE MORRIS 6l 

When but an idle boy, 

I sought its grateful shade ; 
In all their gushing joy 

Here, too, my sisters played. 
My mother kissed me here ; 

My father pressed my hand — 
Forgive this foolish tear, 

But let that old oak stand. 

My heartstrings round thee cling, 

Close as thy bark, old friend ! 
Here shall the wild-bird sing, 

And still thy branches bend. 
Old tree ! the storm still brave ! 

And, woodman, leave the spot ; 
While I've a hand to save, 

Thy axe shall harm it not. 



ALBERT GORTON GREENE 
23 The Baron's Last Banquet 

O'er a low couch the setting sun had thrown its 

latest ray, 
Where in his last strong agony a dying warrior 

lay, 
The stern old Baron Rudiger, whose frame had 

ne'er been bent 
By wasting pain, till time and toil its iron 

strength had spent. 

" They come around me here, and say my days 

of life are o'er, 
That I shall mount my noble steed and lead my 

band no more ; 
They come, and to my beard they dare to tell 

me now, that I, 
Their own liege lord and master born, — that I, 

ha ! ha ! must die. 
62 



ALBERT GORTON GREENE 63 

" And what is Death? I've dared him oft be- 
fore the Paynim spear, — 

Think ye he's entered at my gate, has come to 
seek me here ? 

I've met him, faced him, scorned him, when the 
fight was raging hot, — 

I'll try his might — I'll brave his power; defy, 
and fear him not. ^ 

"Ho! sound the tocsin from my tower, and fire 

the culverin, — 
Bid each retainer arm with speed, — call every 

vassal in, 
Up with my banner on the wall, — the banquet 

board prepare ; 
Throw wide the portal of my hall, and bring my 

armor there ! " 

An hundred hands were busy then — the ban- 
quet forth was spread — 

And rung the heavy oaken floor with many a 
martial tread, 

While from the rich, dark tracery along the 
vaulted wall, 



64 ALBERT GORTON GREENE 

Lights gleamed on harness, plume, and spear, 
o'er the proud old Gothic hall. 

Fast hurrying through the outer gate the mailed 

retainers poured, 
On through the portal's frowning arch, and 

thronged around the board, 
^hile at its head, within his dark, carved oaken 

chair of state, 
Armed cap-a-pie, stern Rudiger, with girded 

falchion, sate. 

" Fill every beaker up, my men, pour forth the 

cheering wine ; 
There's life and strength in every drop, — 

thanksgiving to the vine ! 
Are ye all there, my vassals true ? — mine eyes 

are waxing dim ; 
Fill round, my tried and fearless ones, each 

goblet to the brim. 

" You're there, but yet I see ye not. Draw 
forth each trusty sword 



ALBERT GORTON GREENE 65 

And let me hear your faithful steel clash once 

around my board ; 
I hear it faintly: — Louder yet ! — What clogs 

my heavy breath ? 
Up all, and shout for Rudiger, ' Defiance unto 

Death ! ' " 

Bowl rang to bowl — steel clanged to steel — 
and rose a deafening cry 

That made the torches flare around, and shook 
the flags on high : — 

" Ho ! cravens, do ye fear him ? — Slaves, trai- 
tors ! have ye flown ? 

Ho ! cowards, have ye left me to meet him here 
alone ! 

" But I defy him : — let him come ! " Down 

rang the massy cup, 
While from its sheath the ready blade came 

flashing halfway up ; 
And with the black and heavy plumes scarce 

trembling on his head, 
There in his dark, carved oaken chair Old 

Rudiger sat, — dead. 



SARAH HELEN WHITMAN 

24 A Still Day in Atitumn 

I love to wander through the woodlands hoary 
In the soft light of an autumnal day, 

When Summer gathers up her robes of glory, 
And like a dream of beauty glides away. 

How through each loved, familiar path she lin- 
gers, 

Serenely smiling through the golden mist, 
Tinting the wild grape with her dewy fingers 

Till the cool emerald turns to amethyst ; 

Kindling the faint stars of the hazel, shining 
To light the gloom of Autumn's mouldering 
halls, 
With hoary plumes the clematis entwining 
Where o'er, the rock her withered garland 
falls. 

66 



SARAH HELEN WHITMAN 67 

Warm lights are on the sleepy uplands waning 
Beneath soft clouds along the horizon rolled, 

Till the slant sunbeams through their fringes 
raining 
Bathe all the hills in melancholy gold. 

The moist winds breathe of crisped leaves and 
flowers 

In the damp hollows of the woodland sown, 
Mingling the freshness of autumnal showers 

With spicy airs from cedarn alleys blown. 

Beside the brook and on the umbered meadow, 
Where yellow fern-tufts fleck the faded 
ground, 

With folded lids beneath their palmy shadow 
The gentian nods, in dewy slumbers bound. 

Upon those soft, fringed lids the bee sits brood- 
ing, 
Like a fond lover loath to say farewell, 
Or with shut wings, through silken folds in- 
truding, 
Creeps near her heart his drowsy tale to tell. 



68 SARAH HELEN WHITMAN 

The little birds upon the hillside lonely 
Flit noiselessly along from spray to spray, 

Silent as a sweet wandering thought that only 
Shows its bright wings and softly glides 
away. 



NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS 

25 Parrhasius 

There stood an unsold captive in the mart, 
A gray-haired and majestical old man, 
Chained to a pillar. It was almost night, 
And the last seller from the place had gone, 
And not a sound was heard but of a dog 
Crunching beneath the stall a refuse bone, 
Or the dull echo from the pavement rung, 
As the faint captive changed his weary feet. 
He had stood there since morning, and had borne 
From every eye in Athens the cold gaze 
Of curious scorn. The Jew had taunted him 
For an Olynthian slave. The buyer came 
And roughly struck his palm upon his breast, 
And touched his unhealed wounds, and with a 

sneer 
Passed on ; and when, with weariness o'erspent. 
He bowed his head in a forgetful sleep, 

69 



JO . NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS 

The inhuman soldier smote him, and, with threats 
Of torture to his children, summoned back 
The ebbing blood into his pallid face. 

'Twas evening, and the half-descended sun 
Tipped with a golden fire the many domes 
Of Athens, and a yellow atmosphere 
Lay rich and dusky in the shaded street 
Through which the captive gazed. He had 

borne up 
With a stout heart that long and weary day, 
Haughtily patient of his many wrongs, 
But now he was alone, and from his nerves 
The needless strength departed, and he leaned 
Prone on his massy chain, and let his thoughts 
Throng on him as they would. Unmarked of 

hirti 
Parrhasius at the nearest pillar stood, 
Gazing upon his grief. The Athenian's cheek 
Flushed as he measured with a painter's eye 
The moving picture. The abandoned limbs, 
Stained with the oozing blood, were laced with 

veins 



NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS 71 

Swollen to purple fulness ; the gray hair, 
Thin and disordered, hung about his eyes ; 
And as a thought of wilder bitterness 
Rose in his memory, his lips grew white, 
And the fast workings of his bloodless face 
Told what a tooth of fire was at his heart. 

The golden light into the painter's room 

Streamed richly, and the hidden colors stole 

From the dark pictures radiantly forth, 

And in the soft and dewy atmosphere 

Like forms and landscapes magical they lay. 

The walls were hung with armor, and about 

In the dim corners stood the sculptured forms 

Of Cytheris, and Dian, and stern Jove, 

And from the casement soberly away 

Fell the grotesque long shadows, full and true, ' 

And like a veil of filmy mellowness 

The lint-specks floated in the twilight air. 

Parrhasius stood, gazing forgetfully 

Upon his canvas. There Prometheus lay, 

Chained to the cold rocks of Mount Caucasus — 

The vulture at his vitals, and the links 



72 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS 

Of the lame Lemnian festering in his flesh ; 
And, as the painter's mind felt through the dim, 
Rapt mystery, and plucked the shadows forth 
With its far reaching fancy, and with form 
And color clad them, his fine, earnest eye 
Flashed with a passionate fire, and the quick 

curl 
Of his thin nostril, and his quivering lip 
Were like the winged god's, breathing from his 

flight. 

" Bring me the captive now ! 
My hand feels skilful, and the shadows lift 
From my waked spirit airily and swift, 

And I could paint the bow 
Upon the bended heavens — around me play 
Colors of such divinity to-day. 

" Ha ! bind him on his back ! 
Look ! — as Prometheus in my picture here ! 
Quick — or he faints ! — stand with the cordial 
near ! 

Now — bend him to the rack ! 



NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS 73 

Press down the poisoned links into his flesh ! 
And tear agape that healing wound afresh ! 



" So — let him writhe ! How long 
Will he live thus ? Quick, my good pencil, 

now ! 
What a fine agony works upon his brow ! 

Ha ! gray-haired, and so strong ! 
How fearfully he stifles that short moan ! 
Gods ! if I could but paint a dying groan ! 

"'Pity' thee! So I do! 
I pity the dumb victim at the altar — 
But does the robed priest for his pity falter ? 

I'd rack thee though I knew 
A thousand lives were perishing in thine — 
What were ten thousand to a fame like mine ? 



u < 



Hereafter ! ' Ay — hereafter ! 
A whip to keep a coward to his track ! 
What gave Death ever from his kingdom back 
To check the sceptic's laughter ? 



74 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS 

Come from the grave to-morrow with that 

story, 
And I may take some softer path to glory. 

" No, no, old man ! we die 
Even as the flowers, and we shall breathe 

away 
Our life upon the chance wind, even as they ! 

Strain well thy fainting eye — 
For when that bloodshot quivering is o'er, 
The light of heaven will never reach thee 
more. 

" Yet there's a deathless name ! 
A spirit that the smouldering vault shall 

spurn, 
And like a steadfast planet mount and burn ; 

And though its crown of flame 
Consumed my brain to ashes as it shone, 
By all the fiery stars ! I'd bind it on ! — 

"Ay — though it bid me rifle 
My heart's last fount for its insatiate thirst — 



NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS 75 

Though every life-strung nerve be maddened 
first — 
Though it should bid me stifle 
The yearning in my throat for my sweet child, 
And taunt its mother till my brain went wild — 

"All — I would do it all — 
Sooner than die, like a dull worm, to rot, 
Thrust foully into earth to be forgot ! 

Oh heavens ! — but I appall 
Your heart, old man ! forgive — ha ! on your 

lives 
Let him not faint ! — rack him till he revives ! 

" Vain — vain — give o'er ! His eye 
Glazes apace. He does not feel you now — 
Stand back ! I'll paint the death-dew on his 
brow ! 

Gods ! if he do not die 
But for one moment — one — till I eclipse 
Conception with the scorn of those calm lips ! 

" Shivering ! Hark ! he mutters 
Brokenly now — that was a difficult breath — 



76 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS 

Another ? Wilt thou never come, oh Death ! 

Look ! how his temple flutters ! 
Is his heart still ? Aha ! lift up his head ! 
He shudders — gasps — Jove help him ! — 
so — he's dead." 

How like a mounting devil in the heart 
Rules the unreined ambition ! Let it once 
But play the monarch, and its haughty brow 
Glows with a beauty that bewilders thought 
And unthrones peace forever. Putting on 
The very pomp of Lucifer, it turns 
The heart to ashes, and with not a spring 
Left in the bosom for the spirit's lip, 
We look upon our splendor and forget 
The thirst of which we perish ! Yet hath life 
Many a falser idol. There are hopes 
Promising well; and love-touched dreams for 

some; 
And passions, many a wild one ; and fair schemes 
For gold and pleasure — yet will only this 
Balk not the soul — Ambition, only, gives, 
Even of bitterness, a beaker full ! 



NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS 77 

Friendship is but a slow-awaking dream, 
Troubled at best ; Love is a lamp unseen, 
Burning to waste, or, if its light is found, 
Nursed for an idle hour, then idly broken ; 
Gain is a grovelling care, and Folly tires, 
And Quiet is a hunger never fed; 
And from Love's very bosom, and from Gain, 
Or Folly, or a Friend, or from Repose — 
From all but keen Ambition — will the soul 
Snatch the first moment of forgetfulness 
To wander like a restless child away. 
Oh, if there were not better hopes than these — 
Were there no palm beyond a feverish fame — 
If the proud wealth flung back upon the heart 
Must canker in its coffers — if the links 
Falsehood hath broken will unite no more — 
If the deep yearning love, that hath not found 
Its like in the cold world, must waste in tears — 
If truth and fervor and devotedness, 
Finding no worthy altar, must return 
And die of their own fulness — if beyond 
The grave there is no heaven in whose wide air 
The spirit may find room, and in the love 



78 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS 

Of whose bright habitants the lavish heart 
May spend itself — what thrice-mocked fools 
are we ! 



26 Unseen Spirits 

The shadows lay along Broadway, 

'Twas near the twilight-tide, 
And slowly there a lady fair 

Was walking in her pride. 
Alone walked she ; but, viewlessly, 

Walked spirits at her side. 

Peace charmed the street beneath her feet 
And Honor charmed the air; 

And all astir looked kind on her, 
And called her good as fair, 

For all God ever gave to her 
She kept with chary care. 

She kept with care her beauties rare 
From lovers warm and true, 



NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS 79 

For her heart was cold to all but gold, 
And the rich came not to woo — ■ 

But honored well are charms to sell 
If priests the selling do. 

Now walking there was one more fair — 

A slight girl, lily-pale ; 
And she had unseen company 

To make the spirit quail : 
'Twixt Want and Scorn she walked forlorn, 

And nothing could avail. 

No mercy now can clear her brow 

For this world's peace to pray ; 
For, as love's wild prayer dissolved in air, 

Her woman's heart gave way ! — 
But the sin forgiven by Christ in heaven 

By man is cursed alway ! 



WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS 

27 The Lost Pleiad 

Not in the sky, 

Where it was seen 

So long in eminence of light serene, — 

Nor on the white tops of the glistering wave, 

Nor down in mansions of the hidden deep, 

Though beautiful in green 

And crystal, its great caves of mystery, — 

Shall the bright watcher have 

Her place, and, as of old, high station keep ! 

Gone ! gone ! 
Oh ! nevermore, to cheer 
The mariner, who holds his course alone 
On the Atlantic, through the weary night, 
When the stars turn to watchers, and do sleep. 
Shall it again appear, 
With the sweet-loving certainty of light, 
Down shining on the shut eyes of the deep ! 

80 



WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS 8 1 

The upward-looking shepherd on the hills 
Of Chaldea, night-returning with his flocks, 
He wonders why his beauty doth not blaze, 
Gladding his gaze, — 

And, from his dreary watch along the rocks, 
Guiding him homeward o'er the perilous ways ! 
How stands he waiting still, in a sad maze, 
Much wondering, while the drowsy silence fills 
The sorrowful vault ! — how lingers, in the hope 

that night 
May yet renew the expected and sweet light, 
So natural to his sight ! 

And lone, 

Where, at the first, in smiling love she shone, 
Brood the once happy circle of bright stars : 
How should they dream, until her fate was 

known, 
That they were ever confiscate to death ? 
That dark oblivion the pure beauty mars, 
And, like the earth, its common bloom and 

breath, 
That they should fall from high ; 



82 WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS 

Their lights grow blasted by a touch, and die, 
All their concerted springs of harmony 
Snapt rudely, and the generous music gone ! 

Ah ! still the strain 

Of wailing sweetness fills the saddening sky ; 
The sister stars, lamenting in their pain 
That one of the selectest ones must die, — 
Must vanish, when most lovely, from the rest! 
Alas ! 'tis ever thus the destiny. 
Even Rapture's song hath evermore a tone 
Of wailing, as for bliss too quickly gone. 
The hope most precious is the soonest lost, 
The flower most sweet is first to feel the frost. 
Are not all short-lived things the loveliest ? 
And, like the pale star, shooting down the sky, 
Look they not ever brightest, as they fly 
From the lone sphere they blest ! 



CHARLES FENNO HOFFMAN 

28 Sparkling and Bright 

Sparkling and bright in liquid light, 
Does the wine our goblets gleam in, 
With hue as red as the rosy bed 
Which a bee would choose to dream in. 
Then fill to-night, with hearts as light, 

To loves as gay and fleeting 
As bubbles that sivim on the beaker s brim, 
And break on the lips while meeting. 

Oh ! if Mirth might arrest the flight 
Of Time through Life's dominions, 
We here a while would now beguile 
The graybeard of his pinions, 

To drink to-night, with hearts as light, 

To loves as gay and fleeting 
As bubbles that swim on the beaker's brim, 
And break on the lips while meeting. 
83 



84 CHARLES FENNO HOFFMAN 

But since Delight can't tempt the wight, 
Nor fond Regret delay him, 
Nor Love himself can hold the elf, 
Nor sober Friendship stay him, 

We 11 drink to-niglit, with hearts as light, 

To loves as gay and fleeting 
As btibbles that swim on the beaker's brim 
And break on the lips while meeting. 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 

29 For Annie 

Thank Heaven! the crisis — 
The danger — is past, 

And the lingering illness 
Is over at last — 

And the fever called " Living" 
Is conquered at last. 

Sadly, I know 

I am shorn of my strength, 
And no muscle I move 

As I lie at full length — 
But no matter ! — I feel 

I am better at length. 

And I rest so composedly 

Now, in my bed, 
That any beholder 

Might fancy me dead — 
*5 



86 EDGAR ALLAN POE 

Might start at beholding me, 
Thinking me dead. 

The moaning and groaning, 
The sighing and sobbing, 

Are quieted now, 

With that horrible throbbing 

At heart : — ah that horrible, 
Horrible throbbing ! 

The sickness — the nausea — 
The pitiless pain — 

Have ceased with the fever 
That maddened my brain — 

With the fever called " Living ' 
That burned in my brain. 

And oh ! of all tortures 
That torture the worst 

Has abated — the terrible 
Torture of thirst 

For the naphthaline river 
Of Passion accurst : — • 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 87 

I have drank of a water 

That quenches all thirst, — 

Of a water that flows, 

With a lullaby sound, 
From a spring but a very few 

'Feet under ground — 
From a cavern not very far 

Down under ground. 

And ah ! let it never 

Be foolishly said 
That my room it is gloomy 

And narrow my bed ; 
For man never slept 

In a different bed — 
And, to sleeps you must slumber 

In just such a bed. 

My tantalized spirit 

Here blandly reposes, 
Forgetting, or never 

Regretting, its roses, — 
Its old agitations 

Of myrtles and roses : 



88 EDGAR ALLAN POE 

For now, while so quietly 

Lying, it fancies 
A holier odor 

About it, of pansies — 
A rosemary odor, 

Commingled with pansies — - 
With rue and the beautiful 

Puritan pansies. 

And so it lies happily, 

Bathing in many 
A dream of the truth 

And the beauty of Annie — 
Drowned in a bath 

Of the tresses of Annie. 

She tenderly kissed me, 

She fondly caressed, 
And then I fell gently 

To sleep on her breast — 
Deeply to sleep 

From the heaven of her breast. 

When the light was extinguished, 
She covered me warm, 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 89 

And she prayed to the angels 

To keep me from harm — 
To the queen of the angels - 

To shield me from harm. 

And I lie so composedly, 

Now, in my bed, 
(Knowing her love) 

That you fancy me dead — 
And I rest so contentedly, 

Now, in my bed, 
(With her love at my breast) 

That you fancy me dead — 
That you shudder to look at me, 

Thinking me dead : — 

But my heart it is brighter 

Than all of the many 
Stars in the sky, 

For it sparkles with Annie — 
It glows with the light 

Of the love of my Annie — 
With the thought of the light 

Of the eyes of my Annie. 



90 EDGAR ALLAN POE 

30 The Bells 



Hear the sledges with the bells — 
Silver bells ! 
What a world of merriment their melody fore- 
tells! 

How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, 

In the icy air of night ! 
While the stars that oversprinkle 
All the heavens, seem to twinkle 

With a crystalline delight ; 
Keeping time, time, time, 
In a sort of Runic rhyme, 
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells. 
From the bells, bells, bells, bells, 
Bells, bells, bells — 
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. 



11 

Hear the mellow wedding bells 
Golden bells ! 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 91 

What a world of happiness their harmony fore- 
tells ! 

Through the balmy air of night 
How they ring out their delight ! — 
From the molten-golden notes, 

And all in tune, 
What a liquid ditty floats 
To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats 
On the moon ! 
Oh, from out the sounding cells, 
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells ! 
How it swells ! 
How it dwells 
On the Future ! — How it tells 
Of the rapture that impels 
To the swinging and the ringing 

Of the bells, bells, bells, — 
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, 
Bells, bells, bells — 
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells ! 

in 
Hear the loud alarum bells — 
Brazen bells ! 



92 EDGAR ALLAN POE 

What a tale of terror, now their turbulency 
tells ! 

In the startled ear of night 
How they scream out their affright ! 
Too much horrified to speak, 
They can only shriek, shriek, 
Out of tune, 
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the 

fire, 
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic 
fire, 

Leaping higher, higher, higher, 
With a desperate desire, 
And a resolute endeavor 
Now — now to sit, or never, 
By the side of the pale-faced moon. 
Oh, the bells, bells, bells ! 
What a tale their terror tells 
Of Despair ! 
How they clang, and clash, and roar ! 
What a horror they outpour 
On the bosom of the palpitating air ! 
Yet the ear it fully knows, 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 93 

By the twanging, 
And the clanging, 
How the danger ebbs and flows; 
Yet the ear distinctly tells, 
In the jangling, 
And the wrangling, 
How the danger sinks and swells, 
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of 
the bells — 

Of the bells — 
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, 
Bells, bells, bells — 
In the clamor and the clanging of the bells ! 



IV 

Hear the tolling of the bells — 
Iron bells ! 
What a world of solemn thought their monody 
compels ! 

In the silence of the night, 
How we shiver with affright 
At the melancholy menace of their tone ! 



94 EDGAR ALLAN POE 

For every sound that floats 
From the rust within their throats 

Is a groan. 
And the people — ah, the people — 
They that dwell up in the steeple, 

All alone, 
And who tolling, tolling, tolling, 

In that muffled monotone, 
Feel a glory in so rolling 

On the human heart a stone — 
They are neither man nor woman — 
They are neither brute nor human - 
They are Ghouls : — 
And their king it is who tolls : — 
And he rolls, rolls, rolls, 
Rolls 
A paean from the bells ! 
And his merry bosom swells 

With the paean of the bells ! 
And he dances, and he yells ; 
Keeping time, time, time, 
In a sort of Runic rhyme, 
To the paean of the bells : — 
Of the bells : 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 95 

Keeping time, time, time 
In a sort of Runic rhyme, 

To the throbbing of the bells, — 
Of the bells, bells, bells — 

To the sobbing of the bells : — 
Keeping time, time, time, 

As he knells, knells, knells, 
In a happy Runic rhyme, 
To the rolling of the bells — 
Of the bells, bells, bells : — 
To the tolling of the bells — 
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, 
Bells, bells, bells — 
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells. 

31 The Raven 

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, 
weak and weary, 

Over many a quaint and curious volume of for- 
gotten lore — 

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there 
came a tapping, 



g6 EDGAR ALLAN POE 

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my 

chamber door. 
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, " tapping at 

my chamber door — 

Only this and nothing more." 

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak 

December ; 
And each separate dying ember wrought its 

ghost upon the floor. 
Eagerly I wished the morrow; — vainly I had 

sought to borrow 
From my books surcease of sorrow — sorrow 

for the lost Lenore, — 
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the 

angels name Lenore — 

Nameless here for evermore. 

And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each 

purple curtain 
Thrilled me — filled me with fantastic terrors 

never felt before ; 
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I 

stood repeating 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 97 



a > 



Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my 
chamber door — 
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my 
chamber door ; — 

This it is and nothing more." 

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating 
then no longer, 

" Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgive- 
ness I implore ; 

But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you 
came rapping, 

And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my 
chamber door, 

That I scarce was sure I heard you." Here I 
opened wide the door ; — 

Darkness there and nothing more. 

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood 

there, wondering, fearing, 
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever 

dared to dream before ; 
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness 

gave no token, 



98 EDGAR ALLAN POE 

And the only word there spoken was the whis- 
pered word, " Lenore ! " 

This I whispered, and an echo murmured back 
the word " Lenore ! " 

Merely this and nothing more. 

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul 
within me burning, 

Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder 
than before. 

" Surely,' ' said I, " surely that is something at 
my window-lattice ; 

Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mys- 
tery explore — 

Let my heart be still a mo'ment and this mys- 
tery explore ; — 

'Tis the wind and nothing more ! " 

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many 

a flirt and flutter 
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly 

days of yore. 
Not the least obeisance made he ; not a minute 

stopped or stayed he ; 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 99 

But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above 

my chamber door — 
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my 

chamber door — 

Perched, and sat, and nothing more. 

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy 
into smiling, 

By the grave and stern decorum of the counte- 
nance it wore, 

" Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," 
I said, " art sure no craven, 

Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering 
from the Nightly shore — 

Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's 
Plutonian shore ! " 

Quoth the Raven, " Nevermore." 

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear 
discourse so plainly, 

Though its answer little meaning — little rele- 
vancy bore ; 

For we cannot help agreeing that no living 
human being 



100 EDGAR ALLAN POE 

Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his 

chamber door — 
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his 

chamber door, 

With such name as " Nevermore." 

But the Raven', sitting lonely on that placid bust, 

spoke only 
That one word, as if his soul in that one word 

he did outpour. 
Nothing farther then he uttered — not a feather 

then he fluttered — 
Till I scarcely more than muttered " Other 

friends have flown before — 
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes 

have flown before. ,, 

Then the bird said " Nevermore." 

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly 
spoken, 

" Doubtless," said I, " what it utters is its only 
stock and store 

Caught from some unhappy master whom un- 
merciful Disaster 



EDGAR ALLAN POE IOI 

Followed fast and followed faster till his songs 
one burden bore — 

Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy bur- 
den bore 

Of ' Never, — nevermore.' " 

But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into 

smiling, 
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of 

bird, and bust and door ; 
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself 

to linking 
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous 

bird of yore — 
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and 

ominous bird of yore 

Meant in croaking " Nevermore." 

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable 

expressing 
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into 

my bosom's core : • 

This and more I sat divining, with my head at 

ease reclining 



102 EDGAR ALLAN POE 

On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp- 

• light gloated o'er, 

But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp- 
light gloating o'er, 

She shall press, ah, nevermore ! 

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed 
from an unseen censer 

Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on 

« 

the tufted floor. 

"Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee — 
by these angels he hath sent thee 

Respite — respite and nepenthe from thy memo- 
ries of Lenore ; 

Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget 
this lost Lenore ! " 

Quoth the Raven " Nevermore." 

" Prophet ! " cried I, " thing of evil ! prophet 

still, if bird or devil ! — 
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest 

# tossed thee here ashore, 

Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land 
enchanted — 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 103 

On this home by Horror haunted — tell me truly, 

I implore — 
Is there — is there balm in Gilead ? — tell me — 

tell me, I implore ! " 

Quoth the Raven " Nevermore." 

" Prophet ! " cried I, " thing of evil ! — prophet 

still, if bird or devil ! 
By that Heaven that bends above us — by that 

God we both adore — 
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the 

distant Aidenn, 
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels 

name Lenore — 
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the 

angels name Lenore." 

Quoth the Raven " Nevermore." 

" Be that word our sign of parting, bird or 
fiend ! " I shrieked, upstarting — 

" Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's 
Plutonian shore ! 

Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy 
soul hath spoken ! 



104 EDGAR ALLAN POE 

Leave my loneliness unbroken ! — quit the bust 

above my door ! 
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy 

form from off my door ! " 

Quoth the Raven " Nevermore." 

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, 

still is sitting 
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my 

chamber door ; 
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's 

that is dreaming, 
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws 

his shadow on the floor ; 
And my soul from out that shadow that lies 

floating on the floor 

Shall be lifted — nevermore ! 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

32 The Humblebee 

Burly dozing humblebee ! 
Where thou art is clime for me. 
Let them sail for Porto Rique, 
Far-off heats through seas to seek, 
I will follow thee alone, 
Thou animated torrid zone ! 
Zig-zag steerer, desert cheerer, 
Let me chase thy waving lines ; 
Keep me nearer, me thy hearer, 
Singing over shrubs and vines. 

Insect lover of the sun, 
Joy of thy dominion ! 
Sailor of the atmosphere, 
Swimmer through the waves of air, 
Voyager of light and noon, 
Epicyrean of June, 
Wait 1 prithee, till I come 
105 



106 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

Within ear-shot of thy hum, — 
All without is martyrdom. 

When the south wind, in May days, 
With a net of shining haze, 
Silvers the horizon wall, 
And, with softness touching all, 
Tints the human countenance 
With a color of romance, 
And, infusing subtle heats, 
Turns the sod to violets, 
Thou in sunny solitudes, 
Rover of the underwoods, 
The green silence dost displace, 
With thy mellow breezy bass. 

Hot midsummer's petted crone, 
Sweet to me thy drowsy tone, 
Telling of countless sunny hours, 
Long days, and solid banks of flowers, 
Of gulfs of sweetness without bound 
In Indian wildernesses found, 
Of Syrian peace, immortal leisure, 
Firmest cheer and bird-like pleasure. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 107 

Aught unsavory or unclean, 
Hath my insect never seen, 
But violets and bilberry bells, 
Maple sap and daffodels, 
Grass with green flag half-mast high, 
Succory to match the sky, 
Columbine with horn of honey, 
Scented fern, and agrimony, 
Clover, catchfly, adders-tongue, 
And brier-roses dwelt among ; 
All beside was unknown waste, 
All was picture as he passed. 

Wiser far than human seer, 
Yellow-breeched philosopher ! 
Seeing only what is fair, 
Sipping only what is sweet, 
Thou dost mock at fate and care, 
Leave the chaff and take the wheat. 
When the fierce north-western blast 
Cools sea and land so far and fast, 
Thou already slumberest deep, — 
Woe and want thou canst out-sleep, — 



108 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

Want and woe which torture us, 
Thy sleep makes ridiculous. 



33 The Rhodora 

LINES ON BEING ASKED, WHENCE IS THE FLOWER 

In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes, 
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods, 
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, 
To please the desert and the sluggish brook: 
The purple petals fallen in the pool 
Made the black water with their beauty gay, 
Here might the redbird come his plumes to 

cool, 
And court the flower that cheapens his array. 
Rhodora ! if the sages ask thee why 
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, 
Dear, tell them, that if eyes were made for 

seeing, 
Then beauty is its own excuse for being. 
Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose ! 
I never thought to ask, I never knew, 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 109 

But in my simple ignorance suppose 
The selfsame Power that brought me there 
brought you.. 

34 'Each and All 

Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked 

clown, 
Of thee, from the hill-top looking down ; 
And the heifer, that lows in the upland farm, 
Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm ; 
The sexton tolling the bell at noon, 
Dreams not that great Napoleon 
Stops his horse, and lists with delight, 
Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height ; 
Nor knowest thou what argument 
Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent : 
All are needed by each one, 
Nothing is fair or good alone. 

I thought the sparrow's note from heaven, 
Singing at dawn on the alder bough ; 
I brought him home in his nest at even ; — 
He sings the song, but it pleases not now ; 



IIO RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

For I did not bring home the river and sky ; 
He sang to my ear ; they sang to my eye. 
The delicate shells lay on the, shore ; 
The bubbles of the latest wave 
Fresh pearls to their enamel gave ; 
And the bellowing of the savage sea 
Greeted their safe escape to me ; 
I wiped away the weeds and foam, 
And fetched my sea-born treasures home ; 
But the poor, unsightly, noisome things 
Had left their beauty on the shore 
With the sun, and the sand, and the wild 
uproar. 

The lover watched his graceful maid 

As 'mid the virgin train she strayed, 

Nor knew her beauty's best attire 

Was woven still by the snow-white quire, 

At last she tame to his hermitage, 

Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage, — 

The gay enchantment was undone, 

A gentle wife, but fairy none. 

Then I said, " I covet Truth; 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON in 

Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat, — 

I leave it behind with the games of youth." 

As I spoke, beneath my feet 

The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath, 

Running over the club-moss burrs ; 

I inhaled the violet's breath ; 

Around me stood the oaks and firs ; 

Pine cones and acorns lay on the ground ; 

Above me soared the eternal sky, 

Full of light and deity ; 

Again I saw, again I heard, 

The rolling river, the morning bird ; — 

Beauty through my senses stole, 

I yielded myself to the perfect whole. 

35 The Problem 

I like a church, I like a cowl, 

I love a prophet of the soul, 

And on my heart monastic aisles 

Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles ; 

Yet not for all his faith can see, 

Would I that cowled churchman be. 



112 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

Why should the vest on him allure, 
Which I could not on me endure ? 

Not from a vain or shallow thought 

His awful Jove young Phidias brought ; 

Never from lips of cunning fell 

The thrilling Delphic oracle ; 

Out from the heart of nature rolled 
• The burdens of the Bible old ; 

The litanies of nations came, 

Like the volcano's tongue of flame, 

Up from the burning core below, 

The canticles of love and woe. 

The hand that rounded Peter's dome, 

And groined the aisles of Christian Rome, 

Wrought in a sad sincerity, 

Himself from God he could not free ; 

He builded better than he knew, 

The conscious stone to beauty grew. 

Know'st thou what wove yon woodbird's nest 
Of leaves and feathers from her breast ; 
Or how the fish outbuilt its shell, 
Painting with morn each annual cell ; 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 1 13 

Or how the sacred pine tree adds 
To her old leaves new myriads ? 
Such and so grew these holy piles, 
Whilst love and terror laid the tiles. 
Earth proudly wears the Parthenon 
As the best gem upon her zone; 
And Morning opes with haste her lids 
To gaze upon the Pyramids ; 
O'er England's abbeys bends the sky 
As on its friends with kindred eye ; 
For out of Thought's interior sphere 
These wonders rose to upper air, 
And nature gladly gave them place, 
Adopted them into her race, 
And granted them an equal date 
With Andes and with Ararat. 

These temples grtw as grows the grass, 

Art might obey but not surpass. 

The passive Master lent his hand 

To the vast soul that o'er him planned, 

And the same power that reared the shrine, 

Bestrode the tribes that knelt within. 



114 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

Even the fiery Pentecost 
Girds with one flame the countless host, 
Trances the heart through chanting quires, 
And through the priest the mind inspires. 

The word unto the prophet spoken 
Was writ on tables yet unbroken ; 
m The word by seers or sibyls told 
In groves of oak, or fanes of gold, 
Still floats upon the morning wind, 
Still whispers to the willing mind. 
One accent of the Holy Ghost 
The heedless world hath never lost. 
I know what say the Fathers wise, 
The Book itself before me lies, 
Old Chrysostom, best Augustine, 
And he who blent both in his line, 
The younger Golden-lips or mines, 
Taylor, the Shakespeare of divines, 
His words are music in my ear, 
I see his cowled portrait dear, 
And yet for all his faith could see, 
I would not the good bishop be. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 115 

36 Good-by 

Good-by, proud world, I'm going home, 
Thou'rt not my friend, and I'm not thine ; 
Long through thy weary crowds I roam ; 
A river ark on the ocean brine, 
Long I've been tossed like the driven foam. 
But now, proud world, I'm going home. 

Good-by to Flattery's fawning face, 
To Grandeur, with his wise grimace, 
To upstart Wealth's averted eye, 
To supple Office low and high, 
To crowded halls, to court, and street, 
To frozen hearts, and hasting feet, 
To those who go, and those who come, 
Good-by, proud world, I'm going home. 

I'm going to my own hearth-stone 
Bosomed in yon green hills, alone, 
A secret nook in a pleasant land, 
Whose groves the frolic fairies planned ; 
Where arches green the livelong day 
Echo the blackbird's roundelay, 



Il6 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

And vulgar feet have never trod 

A spot that is sacred to thought and God. 

Oh, when I am safe in my sylvan home, 
I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome ; 
And when I am stretched beneath the pines 
Where the evening star so holy shines, 
I laugh at the lore and the pride of man, 
At the sophist schools, and the learned clan ; 
For what are they all in their high conceit, 
When man in the bush with God may meet. 



ISAAC McLELLAN 

37 New England's Dead 

New England's dead ! New England's dead ! 

On every hill they lie ; 
On every field of strife, made red 

By bloody victory. 
Each valley, where the battle poured 

Its red and awful tide, 
Beheld the brave New England sword 

With slaughter deeply dyed. 
Their bones are on the northern hill, 

And on the southern plain, 
By brook and river, lake and rill, 

And by the roaring main. 

The land is holy where they fought, 

And holy where they fell ; 
For by their blood that land was bought, 

The land they loved so well. 
117 



Il8 ISAAC McLELLAN 

Then glory to that valiant band, 
The honored saviors of the land ! 

Oh, few and weak their numbers were, — 

A handful of brave men ; 
But to their God they gave their prayer, 

And rushed to battle then. 
The God of battles heard their cry, 
And sent to them the victory. 

They left the ploughshare in the mould, 
Their flocks and herds without a fold, 
The sickle in the unshorn grain, 
The corn, half-garnered, on the plain, 
And mustered, in their simple dress, 
For wrongs to seek a stern redress, 
To right those wrongs, come weal, come woe, 
To perish, or o'ercome their foe. 

And where are ye, O fearless men ? 

And where are ye to-day ? 
I call : — the hills reply again 

That ye have passed away ; 



ISAAC McLELLAN 1 19 

That on old Bunker's lonely height, 

In Trenton, and in Monmouth ground, 
The grass grows green, the harvest bright 

Above each soldier's mound. 
The bugle's wild and warlike blast 

Shall muster them no more ; 
An army now might thunder past, 

And they heed not its roar. 
The starry flag, 'neath which they fought 

In many a bloody day, 
From their old graves shall rouse them not, 

For they have passed away. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

38 Hymn to the Night 

AcnraaLr}, T/otAXtcrros 

TLbrvia, Trbrvia w£, 

virvodoTeipa rCov iroXvirdvayv (3poTQp, 

''Epeftodev lSl • fxdXe fxoXe Kardirrepos 

'AyafjL€[Av6vLov iirl ddfiov 

vwb yap aXyecov, virb re avfxcpopds 

§toi%6/>ce^', olxo/Jieda. 

Euripides. 

I heard the trailing garments of the Night 
Sweep through her marble halls ! 

I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light 
From the celestial walls ! 

I felt her presence, by its spell of might, 

Stoop o'er me from above ; 
The calm, majestic presence of the Night, 

As of the one I love. 

I heard the sounds of sorrow and delight, 
The manifold, soft chimes, 
120 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 12 1 

That fill the haunted chambers of the Night, 
Like some old poet's rhymes. 

From the cool cisterns of the midnight air 

My spirit drank repose ; 
The fountain of perpetual peace flows there, — 

From those deep cisterns flows. 

O holy Night ! from thee I learn to bear 

What man has borne before ! 
Thou layest thy finger on the lips of Care, 

And they complain no more. 

Peace ! Peace ! Orestes-like I breathe this 
prayer ! 
Descend with broad-winged flight, 
The welcome, the thrice-prayed for, the most 
fair, 
The best-beloved Night ! 



39 The Arsenal at Springfield 

This is the Arsenal. From floor to ceiling, 
Like a huge organ, rise the burnished arms ; 



122 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

But from their silent pipes no anthem pealing 
Startles the villages with strange alarms. 

Ah ! what a sound will rise, how wild and 
dreary, 
When the death-angel touches those swift 
keys ! 
What loud lament and dismal Miserere 
Will mingle with their awful symphonies ! 

I hear even now the infinite fierce chorus, 
The cries of agony, the endless groan, 

Which, through the ages that have gone before 
us, 
In long reverberations reach our own. 

On helm and harness rings the Saxon hammer, 
Through Cimbric forest roars the Norseman's 
song, . 

And loud, amid the universal clamor, 

O'er distant deserts sounds the Tartar gong. 

I hear the Florentine, who from his palace 
Wheels out his battle-bell with dreadful din, 



HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW 123 

And Aztec priests upon their teocallis 

Beat the wild war-drums made of serpent's 
skin; 

The tumult of each sacked and burning village ; 

The shout that every prayer for mercy 
drowns ; 
The soldiers' revels in the midst of pillage ; 

The wail of famine in beleaguered towns ; 

The bursting shell, the gateway wrenched asun- 
der, 

The rattling musketry, the clashing blade ; 
And ever and anon, in tones of thunder, 

The diapason of the cannonade. 

Is it, O man, with such discordant noises, 
With such accursed instruments as these, 

Thou drownest Nature's sweet and kindly 
voices, 
And j arrest the celestial harmonies ? 

Were half the power, that fills the world with 
terror, 



124 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Were half the wealth, bestowed on camps 
and courts, 
Given to redeem the human mind from error, 
There were no need of arsenals nor forts : 

The warrior's name would be a name abhorred ! 

And every nation that should lift again 
Its hand against a brother, on its forehead 

Would wear for evermore the curse of Cain ! 

Down the dark future, through long genera- 
tions. 
The echoing sounds grow fainter and then 
cease ; 
And like a bell, with solemn, sweet vibrations, 
I hear once more the voice of Christ say, 
" Peace !" 

Peace ! and no longer from its brazen portals 
The blast of War's great organ shakes the 
skies ! 

But beautiful as songs of the immortals, 
The holy melodies of love arise. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 125 

40 The Fire of Driftwood 

We sat within the farm-house old, 

Whose windows, looking o'er the bay, 

Gave to the sea-breeze, damp and cold, 
An easy entrance, night and day. 

Not far away we saw the port, — 

The strange, old-fashioned, silent town, — 

The lighthouse, — the dismantled fort, — 
The wooden houses, quaint and brown. 

We sat and talked until the night, 
Descending, filled the little room ; 

Our faces faded from the sight 
Our voices only broke the gloom. 

We spake of many a vanished scene, 
Of what we once had thought and said, 

Of what had been, and might have been, 
And who was changed, and who was dead ; 

And all that fills the hearts of friends, 
When first they feel, with secret pain, 



126 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Their lives thenceforth have separate ends, 
And never can be one again ; 

The first slight swerving of the heart, 
That words are powerless to express, 

And leave it still unsaid in part, 
Or say it in too great excess. 

The very tones in which we spake 

Had something strange, I could but mark ; 

The leaves of memory seemed to make 
A mournful rustling in the dark. 

Oft died the words upon our lips, 

As suddenly, from out the fire 
Built of the wreck of stranded ships, 

The flames would leap and then expire. 

And, as their splendor flashed and failed, 
We thought of wrecks upon the main, 

Of ships dismasted, that were hailed 
And sent no answer back again. 

The windows, rattling in their frames, — 
The ocean, roaring up the beach, — 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 127 

The gusty blast, — the bickering flames, — 
All mingled vaguely in our speech ; 

Until they made themselves a part 

Of fancies floating through the brain, — 

The long-lost ventures of the heart, 
That send no answers back again. 

O flames that glowed ! O hearts that yearned ! 

They were indeed too much akin, 
The driftwood fire without that burned, 

The thoughts that burned and glowed within. 



41 Resignation 

There is no flock, however watched and tended, 

But one dead lamb is there ! 
There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended, 

But has one vacant chair ! 

The air is full of farewells to the dying, 

And mournings for the dead ; 
The heart of Rachel, for her children crying, 

Will not be comforted ! 



128 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Let us be patient ! These severe afflictions 

Not from the ground arise, 
But oftentimes celestial benedictions 

Assume this dark disguise. 

We see but dimly through the mists and vapors ; 

Amid these earthly damps 
What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers 

May be heaven's distant lamps. 

There is no Death ! What seems so is transi- 
tion. 

This life of mortal breath 
Is but a suburb of the life elysian, 

Whose portal we call Death. 

She is not dead, — the child of our affection, — 

But gone unto that school 
Where she no longer needs our poor protection, 

And Christ himself doth rule. 

In that great cloister's stillness and seclusion, 

By guardian angels led, 
Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution, 

She lives, whom we call dead. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 129 

Day after day we think what she is doing 

In those bright realms of air ; 
Year after year, her tender steps pursuing, 

Behold her grown more fair. 

Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken 

The bond which nature gives, 
Thinking that our remembrance, though un- 
spoken, 

May reach her where she lives. 

Not as a child shall we again behold her ; 

For when with raptures wild 
In our embraces we again enfold her, 

She will not be a child ; 

But a fair maiden, in her Father's mansion, 

Clothed with celestial grace ; 
And beautiful with all the soul's expansion 

Shall we behold her face. 

And though at times impetuous with emotion 
And anguish long suppressed, 



130 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

The swelling heart heaves moaning like the 
ocean, 
That cannot be at rest, — 

We will be patient, and assuage the feeling 

We may not wholly stay ; 
By silence sanctifying, not concealing, 

The grief that must have way. 

42 Sea-weed 

When descends on the Atlantic 

The gigantic 
Storm-wind of the equinox, 
Landward in his wrath he scourges 

The toiling surges, 
Laden with sea-weed from the rocks : 

From Bermuda's reefs ; from edges 

Of sunken ledges, 
In some far-off, bright Azore ; 
From Bahama, and the dashing, 

Silver-flashing 
Surges of San Salvador ; 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 131 

From the tumbling surf, that buries 

The Orkneyan skerries, 
Answering the hoarse Hebrides ; 
And from wrecks of ships, and drifting 

Spars, uplifting 
On the desolate, rainy seas ; — 

Ever drifting, drifting, drifting 

On the shifting 
Currents of the restless main ; 
Till in sheltered coves, and reaches 

Of sandy beaches, 
All have found repose again. 

So when storms of wild emotion 

Strike the ocean 
Of the poet's soul, erelong, 
From each cave and rocky fastness 

In its vastness, 
Floats some fragment of a song : 

From the far-off isles enchanted 

Heaven has planted 
With the golden fruit of Truth; 



132 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

From the flashing surf, whose vision 

Gleams Elysian 
In the tropic clime of Youth ; 

From the strong Will, and the Endeavor 

That forever 
Wrestles with the tides of Fate ; 
From the wreck of Hopes far-scattered, 

Tempest-shattered, 
Floating waste and desolate ; — 

Ever drifting, drifting, drifting 

On the shifting 
Currents of the restless heart ; 
Till at length in books recorded, 

They, like hoarded 
Household words, no more depart. 

43 The Day is Done 

The day is done, and the darkness 
Falls from the wings of Night, 

As a feather is wafted downward 
From an eagle in his flight. 



HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW 133 

I see the lights of the village 

Gleam through the rain and the mist, 

And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me, 
That my soul cannot resist : 

A feeling of sadness and longing, 

That is not akin to pain, 
And resembles sorrow only 

As the mist resembles the rain. 

Come, read to me some poem, 
Some simple and heartfelt lay, 

That shall soothe this restless feeling, 
And banish the thoughts of day. 

Not from the grand old masters, 

Not from the bards sublime, 
Whose distant footsteps echo 

Through the corridors of Time. 

For like strains of martial music, 
Their mighty thoughts suggest 

Life's endless toil and endeavor ; 
And to-night I long for rest. 



134 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Read from some humbler poet, 

Whose songs gushed from his heart, 

As showers from the clouds of summer, 
Or tears from the eyelids start ; 

Who, through long days of labor, 

And nights devoid of ease, 
Still heard in his soul the music 

Of wonderful melodies. 

Such songs have power to quiet 

The restless pulse of care, 
And come like the benediction 

That follows after prayer. 

Then read from the treasured volume 

The poem of thy choice, 
And lend to the rhyme of the poet 

The beauty of thy voice. 

*And the night shall be filled with music, 
And the cares that infest the day, 

Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs, 
And as silently steal away. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

The Angel of Patience 

A FREE PARAPHRASE OF THE GERMAN 

To weary hearts, to mourning homes, 
God's meekest Angel gently comes : 
No power has he to banish pain, 
Or give us back our lost again ; 
And yet in tenderest love our dear 
And heavenly Father sends him here. 

There's quiet in that Angel's glance, 

There's rest in his still countenance ! 

He mocks no grief with idle cheer, 

Nor wounds with words the mourner's ear; 

But ills and woes he may not cure 

He kindly trains us to endure. 

Angel of Patience ! sent to calm 
Our feverish brows with cooling palm ; 
To lay the storms of hope and fear, 
And reconcile life's smile and tear ; 
i35 



136 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

The throbs of wounded pride to still, 
And make our own our Father's will ! 

O thou who mournest on thy way, 
With longings for the close of day ; 
He walks with thee, that Angel kind, 
And gently whispers, " Be resigned : 
Bear up, bear on, the end shall tell 
The dear Lord ordereth all things well ! " 

45 The Barefoot Boy 

Blessings on thee, little man, 
Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan! 
With thy turned-up pantaloons, 
And thy merry whistled tunes ; 
With thy red lip, redder still 
Kissed by strawberries on the hill ; 
With the sunshine on thy face, 
Through thy torn brim's jaunty grace; 
From my heart I give thee joy, — 
I was once a barefoot boy ! 
Prince thou art, — the grown-up man 
Only is republican. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 137 

Let the million-dollared ride ! 
Barefoot, trudging at his side, 
Thou hast more than he can buy- 
In the reach of ear and eye, — 
Outward sunshine, inward joy : 
Blessings on thee, barefoot boy ! 

O for boyhood's painless play, 
Sleep that wakes in laughing day, 
Health that mocks the doctor's rules, 
Knowledge never learned of schools, 
Of the wild bee's morning chase, 
Of the wild-flower's time and place, 
Flight of fowl and habitude 
Of the tenants of the wood ; 
How the tortoise bears his shell, 
How the woodchuck digs his cell, 
And the ground-mole sinks his well ; 
How the robin feeds her young, 
How the oriole's nest is hung ; 
Where the whitest lilies blow, 
Where the freshest berries grow, 
Where the groundnut trails its vine, 



138 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

Where the wood-grape's clusters shine ; 
Of the black wasp's cunning way, 
Mason of his walls of clay, 
And the architectural plans 
Of gray hornet artisans ! — 
For, eschewing books and tasks, 
Nature answers all he asks ; 
Hand in hand with her he walks, 
Face to face with her he talks, 
Part and parcel of her joy, — 
Blessings on the barefoot boy ! 

O for boyhood's time of June. 
Crowding years in one brief moon, 
When all things I heard or saw, 
Me, their master, waited for. 
I was rich in flowers and trees, 
Humming-birds and honey-bees ; 
For my sport the squirrel played, 
Plied the snouted mole his spade ; 
For my taste the blackberry cone 
Purpled over hedge and stone; 
Laughed the brook for my delight 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 139 

Through the day and through the night, 
Whispering at the garden wall, 
Talked with me from fall to fall ; 
Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond, 
Mine the walnut slopes beyond, 
Mine, on bending orchard trees, 
Apples of Hesperides ! 
Still as my horizon grew, 
Larger grew my riches too ; 
All the world I saw or knew 
Seemed a complex Chinese toy, 
Fashioned for a barefoot boy ! 

O for festal dainties spread, 
Like my bowl of milk and bread, — 
Pewter spoon and bowl of wood, 
On the door-stone, gray and rude ! 
O'er me, like a regal tent, 
Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent, 
Purple-curtained, fringed with gold, 
Looped in many a wind-swung fold ; 
While for music came the play 
Of the pied frogs' orchestra ; 



I4Q JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

And, to light the noisy choir, 
Lit the fly his lamp of fire. 
I was monarch : pomp and joy 
Waited on the barefoot boy ! 

Cheerily, then, my little man, 
Live and laugh, as boyhood can ! 
Though the flinty slopes be hard, 
Stubble-speared the new-mown sward, 
Every morn shall lead thee through 
Fresh baptisms of the dew ; 
Every evening from thy feet 
Shall the cool wind kiss the heat : 
All too soon these feet must hide 
In the prison cells of pride, 
Lose the freedom of the sod, 
Like a colt's for work be shod, 
Made to tread the mills of toil, 
Up and down in ceaseless moil : 
Happy if their track be found 
Never on forbidden ground ; 
Happy if they sink not in 
Quick and treacherous sands of sin. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 141 

Ah ! that thou couldst know thy joy, 
Ere it passes, barefoot boy ! 



46 Burns 

ON RECEIVING A SPRIG OF HEATHER IN BLOSSOM 

No more these simple flowers belong 

To Scottish maid and lover, 
Sown in the common soil of song, 

They bloom the wide world over. 

In smiles and tears, in sun and showers, 
The minstrel and the heather, 

The deathless singer and the flowers 
He sang of live together. 

Wild heather-bells and Robert Burns ! 

The moorland flower and peasant ! 
How, at their mention, memory turns 

Her pages old and pleasant ! 

The gray sky wears again its gold 

And purple of adorning, 
And manhood's noonday shadows hold 

The dews of boyhood's morning : 



142 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

The dews that washed the dust and soil 
From off the wings of pleasure, 

The sky, that flecked the ground of toil 
With golden threads of leisure. 

I call to mind the summer day, 

The early harvest mowing, 
The sky with sun and clouds at play, 

And flowers with breezes blowing. 

I hear the blackbird in the corn, 

The locust in the haying ; 
And, like the fabled hunter's horn, 

Old tunes my heart is playing. 

How oft that day, with fond delay, 
I sought the maple's shadow, 

And sang with Burns the hours away, 
Forgetful of the meadow ! 

Bees hummed, birds twittered, overhead 
I heard the squirrels leaping, 

The good dog listened while I read, 
And wagged his tail in keeping. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 143 

I watched him while in sportive mood 
I read " The Twa Dogs' " story, 

And half believed he understood 
The poet's allegory. 

Sweet day, sweet songs! — The golden hours 

Grew brighter for that singing, 
From brook and bird and meadow flowers 

A dearer welcome bringing. 

New light on home-seen Nature beamed, 

New glory over Woman ; 
And daily life and duty seemed 

No longer poor and common. 

I woke to find the simple truth 

Of fact and feeling better 
Than all the dreams that held my youth 

A still repining debtor : 

That Nature gives her handmaid, Art, 
The themes of sweet discoursing ; 

The tender idyls of the heart 
In every tongue rehearsing. 



144 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

Why dream of lands of gold and pearl, 

Of loving knight and lady, 
When farmer boy and barefoot girl 

Were wandering there already ? 

I saw through all familiar things 

The romance underlying; 
The joys and griefs that plume the wings 

Of Fancy skyward flying. 

I saw the same blithe day return, 
The same sweet fall of even, 

That rose on wooded Craigie-burn, 
And sank on crystal Devon. 

I matched with Scotland's heathery hills 
The sweet-brier and the clover ; 

With Ayr and Doon, my native rills, 
Their wood-hymns chanting over. 

O'er rank and pomp, as he had seen, 

I saw the Man uprising ; 
No longer common or unclean, 

The child of God's baptizing ! 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 145 

With clearer eyes I saw the worth 

Of life among the lowly ; 
The Bible at his Cotter's hearth 

Had made my own more holy. 

And if at times an evil strain, 

To lawless love appealing, 
Broke in upon the sweet refrain ' 

Of pure and healthful feeling, 

It died upon the eye and ear, 

No inward answer gaining ; 
No heart had I to see or hear 

The discord and the staining. 

Let those who never erred forget 
His worth, in vain bewailings ; 

Sweet Soul of Song ! — I own my debt 
Uncancelled by his failings ! 

Lament who will the ribald line 
Which tells his lapse from duty, 

How kissed the maddening lips of wine 
Or wanton ones of beauty ; 



146 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

But think, while falls that shade between 
The erring one and Heaven, 

That he who loved like Magdalen, 
Like her may be forgiven. 

Not his the song whose thunderous chime 

Eternal echoes render, — 
The mournful Tuscan's haunted rhyme, 

And Milton's starry splendor ! 

But who his human heart has laid 

To Nature's bosom nearer ? 
Who sweetened toil like him, or paid 

To love a tribute dearer ? 

Through all his tuneful art, how strong 

The human feeling gushes ! 
The very moonlight of his song 

Is warm with smiles and blushes ! 

Give lettered pomp to teeth of Time, 
So " Bonnie Doon" but tarry ; 

Blot out the Epic's stately rhyme, 
But spare his " Highland Mary " ! 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 147 

47 The Reformer 

All grim and soiled and brown with tan, 

I saw a Strong One, in his wrath, 
Smiting the godless shrines of man 
Along his path. 

The Church, beneath her trembling dome 

Essayed in vain her ghostly charm : 
Wealth shook within his gilded home 
With strange alarm. 

Fraud from his secret chambers fled 

Before the sunlight bursting in : 
Sloth drew her pillow o'er her head 
To drown the din. 

" Spare," Art implored, " yon holy pile ; 

That grand, old, time-worn turret spare ; M 
Meek Reverence, kneeling in the aisle, 
Cried out, " Forbear ! " 

Gray-bearded Use, who, deaf and blind, 
Groped for his old accustomed stone, 



148 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

Leaned on his staff, and wept to find 
His seat o'erthrown. 

Young Romance raised his dreamy eyes, 

O'erhung with paly locks of gold, — 
" Why smite," he asked in sad surprise, 
" The fair, the old?" 

Yet louder rang the Strong One's stroke, 

Yet nearer flashed his axe's gleam ; 
Shuddering and sick of heart I woke, 
As from a dream. 

I looked : aside the dust-cloud rolled,, — 
The Waster seemed the Builder too ; 
Up springing from the ruined Old 
I saw the New. 

'Twas but the ruin of the bad, — 

The wasting of the wrong and ill ; 
Whate'er of good the old time had 
Was living still. 

Calm grew the brows of him I feared ; 
The frown which awed me passed away, 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 149 

And left behind a smile which cheered 
Like breaking day. 

The grain grew green on battle-plains, 

O'er swarded war-mounds grazed the cow; 
The slave stood forging from his chains 
The spade and plough. 

Where frowned the fort, pavilions gay 

And cottage windows, flower-entwined, 
Looked out upon the peaceful bay 
And hills behind. 

Through vine-wreathed cups with wine once 
red, 
The lights on brimming crystal fell, 
Drawn, sparkling, from the rivulet head 
And mossy well. 

Through prison-walls, like Heaven-sent hope, 
Fresh breezes blew, and sunbeams strayed, 
And with the idle gallows-rope 
The young child played. 

Where the doomed victim in his cell 
Had counted o'er the weary hours, 



% 



150 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

Glad school-girls, answering to the bell, 
Came crowned with flowers. 

Grown wiser for the lesson given, 

I fear no longer, for I know 
That, where the share is deepest driven, 
The best fruits grow. 

The outworn rite, the old abuse, 

The pious fraud transparent grown, 
The good held captive in the use 
Of wrong alone, — 

These wait their doom, from that great law 
Which makes the past time serve to-day ; 
And fresher life the world shall draw 
From their decay. 

O, backward-looking son of time! 
The new is old, the old is new, 
The cycle of a change sublime 
Still sweeping through. 

So wisely taught the Indian seer ; 
Destroying Seva, forming Brahm, 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 151 

Who wake by turns Earth's love and fear, 
Are one, the same. 

As idly as, in that old day, 

Thou mournest, did thy sires repine, 
So, in his time, thy child grown gray 
Shall sigh for thine. 

Yet, not the less for them or thou 

The eternal step of Progress beats 
To that great anthem, calm and slow, 
Which God repeats ! 

Take heart ! — the Waster builds again, — 

A charmed life old Goodness hath ; 
The tares may perish, — but the grain 
Is not for death. 

God works in all things ; all obey 

His first propulsion from the night : 
Ho, wake and watch ! — the world is gray 
With morning light ! 



152 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

48 The Eve of Election 

From gold to gray 

Our mild sweet day 
Of Indian summer fades too soon ; 

But tenderly 

Above the sea 
Hangs, white and calm, the hunter's moon. 

In its pale fire, 

The f village spire 
Shows like the zodiac's spectral lance ; 

The painted walls 

Whereon it falls 
Transfigured stand in marble trance ! 

O'er fallen leaves 

The west-wind grieves, 
Yet comes a seed-time round again ; 

And morn shall see 

The State sown free 
With baleful tares or healthful grain. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 153 

Along the street 

The shadows meet 
Of Destiny, whose hands conceal 

The moulds of fate 

That shape the State, 
And make or mar the common weal. 

Arouiid I see 

The powers that be ; 
I stand by Empire's primal springs ; 

And princes meet 

In every street, 
And hear the tread of uncrowned kings ! 

Hark ! through the crowd 

The laugh runs loud, 
Beneath the sad, rebuking moon. 

God save the land, 

A careless hand 
May shake or swerve ere morrow's noon ! 

No jest is this ; 
One cast amiss 
May blast the hope of Freedom's year. 



154 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

O, take me where 
Are hearts of prayer, 
And foreheads bowed in reverent fear ! 

Not lightly fall 

Beyond recall 
The written scrolls a breath can float ; 

The crowning fact, 

The kingliest act 
Of Freedom is the freeman's vote ! 

For pearls that gem 

A diadem 
The diver in the deep sea dies ; 

The regal right 

We boast to-night 
Is ours through costlier sacrifice ; 

The blood of Vane, 

His prison pain 
Who traced the path the pilgrim trod, 

And hers whose faith 

Drew strength from death, 
And prayed her Russell up to God ! 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 155 

Our hearts grow cold, 

We lightly hold 
A right which brave men died to gain ; 

The stake, the cord, 

The axe, the sword, 
Grim nurses at its birth of pain. 

The shadow rend, 

And o'er us bend, 
O martyrs, with your crowns and palms, — 

Breathe through these throngs 

Your battle songs, 
Your scaffold prayers and dungeon psalms ! 

Look from the sky, 

Like God's great eye, 
Thou solemn moon, with searching beam ; 

Till in the sight 

Of thy pure light 
Our mean self-seekings meaner seem. 

Shame from our hearts 
Unworthy arts, 
The fraud designed, the purpose dark ; 



156 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

And smite away 
The hands we lay 
Profanely on the sacred ark. 

To party claims 

And private aims, 
Reveal that august face of Truth, 

Whereto are given 

The age of heaven, 
The beauty of immortal youth. 

So shall our voice 

Of sovereign choice 
Swell the deep bass of duty done, 

And strike the key 

Of time to be, 
When God and man shall speak as one ! 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

49 The Chambered Nautilus 

This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, 

Sails the unshadowed main, — 

The venturous bark that flings 
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings 
In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings, 

And coral reefs lie bare, 
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their 
streaming hair. 

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl; 

Wrecked is the ship of pearl ! 

And every chambered cell, 
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell, 
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, 

Before thee lies revealed, — 
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed ! 

*57 



158 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

Year after year beheld the silent toil 

That spread his lustrous coil ; 

Still, as the spiral grew, 
He left the past year's dwelling for the new, 
Stole with soft step its shining archway through, 

Built up its idle door, 
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the 
old no more. 



Thanks for the heavenly message brought by 
thee, 
Child of the wandering sea, 
Cast from her lap forlorn ! 
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born 
Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn ! 

While on mine ear it rings, 
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a 
voice that sings : — 

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, 
As the swift seasons roll ! 
Leave thy low-vaulted past ! 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 159 

Let each new temple, nobler than the last, 
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 

Till thou at length art free, 
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting 
sea! 

50 Old Ironsides 1 

Ay, tear her tattered ensign down ! 

Long has it waved on high, 
And many an eye has danced to see 

That banner in the sky ; 
Beneath it rung the battle shout, 

And burst the cannon's roar ; — 
The meteor of the ocean air 

Shall sweep the clouds no more. 

Her deck, once red with heroes' blood, 
Where knelt the vanquished foe, 

When winds were hurrying o'er the flood, 
And waves were white below, 

1 Verses, the popularity of which averted the proposed 
breaking up of the old frigate Constitution, then lying at the 
Navy Yard in Charlestown, Mass. 



l60 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

No more shall feel the victor's tread, 
Or know the conquered knee ; — 

The harpies of the shore shall pluck 
The eagle of the sea ! 

Oh, better that her shattered hulk 

Should sink beneath the wave ; 
Her thunders shook the mighty deep, 

And there should be her grave ; 
Nail to the mast her holy flag, 

Set every threadbare sail, 
And give her to the god of storms, 

The lightning and the gale ! 

51 The Deacon's Masterpiece: 

OR, THE WONDERFUL ONE-HOSS SHAY 

A Logical Story 

Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay, 

That was built in such a logical way 

It ran a hundred years to a day, 

And then of a sudden, it — ah, but stay, 

I'll tell you what happened without delay, 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES l6l 

Scaring the parson into fits, . 
Frightening people out of their wits, — 
Have you ever heard of that, I say ? 

Seventeen hundred and fifty-five. 
Georgins Secundus was then alive, — 
Snuffy old drone from the German hive. 
That was the year when Lisbon-town 
Saw the earth open and gulp her down, 
And Braddock's army was done so brown, 
Left without a scalp to its crown. 
It was on the terrible earthquake-day 
That the Deacon finished the one-hoss shay. 

Now in building of chaises, I tell you what, 

There is always somewhere a weakest spot, — 

In hub, tire, felloe, in spring or thill, 

In panel, or crossbar, or floor, or sill, 

In screw, bolt, thoroughbrace, — lurking still, 

Find it somewhere you must and will, — 

Above or below, or within or without, — 

And that's the reason, beyond a doubt, 

A chaise breaks down, but doesn't wear out. 



162 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

But the Deacon swore (as Deacons do, 
With an " I dew vum," or an " I tell yeou") 
He would build one shay to beat the taown 
'n' the keounty 'n' all the kentry raoun' : 
It should be so. built that it coicldn break daown ; 
— " Fur," said the Deacon, " 't's mighty plain 
Thut the weakes' place mus' stan' the strain; 
'n' the way t' fix it, uz I maintain, 

Is only jest 
T make that place uz strong uz the rest." 

So the Deacon inquired of the village folk 
Where he could find the strongest oak, 
That couldn't be split nor bent nor broke, — 
That was for spokes and floor and sills ; 
He sent for lancewood to make the thills ; 
The crossbars were ash, from the straightest 

trees ; 
The panels of whitewood, that cuts like cheese, 
But lasts like iron for things like these ; 
The hubs of logs from the " Settler's ellum," — 
Last of its timber, — they couldn't sell 'em, 
Never an axe had seen their chips, 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 163 

And the wedges flew from between their lips, 
Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips ; 
Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw, 
Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too, 
Steel of the finest, bright and blue ; 
Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide; 
Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide 
Found in the pit when the tanner died. 
That was the way he " put her through/' 
" There ! " said the Deacon, " naow she'll dew ! " 

Do ! I tell you, I rather guess 

She was a wonder, and nothing less ! 

Colts grew horses, beards turned gray, 

Deacon and deaconess dropped away, 

Children and grandchildren, — where were they ? 

But there stood the stout old one-hoss shay 

As fresh as on Lisbon-earthquake-day ! 

Eighteen hundred ; — it came and found 
The Deacon's masterpiece strong and sound. 
Eighteen hundred increased by ten ; — 
"Hahnsum kerridge" they called it then. 



1 64 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

Eighteen hundred and twenty came ; — 
Running as usual ; much the same. 
Thirty and forty at last arrive, 
And then came fifty, and fifty-five. 

Little of all we value here 

Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year 

Without both feeling and looking queer. 

In fact, there's nothing that keeps its youth, 

So far as I know, but a tree and truth. 

(This is a moral that runs at large ; 

Take it. — You're welcome. — No extra charge.) 

First of November, — the Earthquake-day. ■*— 
There are traces of age in the one-hoss shay, 
A general flavor of mild decay, 
But nothing local as one may say. 
There couldn't be, — for the Deacon's art 
Had made it so like in every part 
That there wasn't a chance for one to start. 
For the wheels were just as strong as the thills, 
And the floor was just as strong as the sills, 
And the panels just as strong as the floor, 
And the whippletree neither less nor more, 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 165 

And the back-crossbar as strong as the fore, 
And spring and axle and hub e7icore y 
And yet, as a zvhole, it is past a doubt 
In another hour it will be zvorn out ! 

First of November, 'Fifty-five ! 

This morning the parson takes a drive. 

Now, small boys, get out of the way ! 

Here comes the wonderful one-hoss shay, 

Drawn by a rat-tailed, ewe-necked bay. 

" Huddup ! " said the parson. — Off went they. 

The parson was working his Sunday's text, — 

Had got to fifthly, and stopped perplexed 

At what the — Moses — was coming next. 

All at once the horse stood still, 

Close by the meet'n'-house on the hill. 

— First a shiver, and then a thrill, 
Then something decidedly like a spill, — 
And the parson was sitting upon a rock, 

At half-past nine by the meet'n'-house clock, — 
Just the hour of the Earthquake shock ! 

— What do you think the parson found, 
When he got up and stared around ? 



166 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

The poor old chaise in a heap or mound, 
As if it had been to the mill and ground ! 
You see, of course, if you're not a dunce, 
How it went to pieces all at once, — 
All at once, and nothing first, — 
Just as bubbles do when they burst. 

End of the wonderful one-hoss shay. 
Logic is logic. That's all I say. 



52 The Voiceless 

We count the broken lyres that rest 

Where the sweet wailing singers slumber, — 
But o'er their silent sister's breast 

The wild flowers who will stoop to number ? 
A few can touch the magic string, 

And noisy Fame is proud to win them ; — 
Alas for those that never sing, 

But die with all their music in them ! 

Nay, grieve not for the dead alone 

Whose song has told their hearts* sad story, — 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 167 

Weep for the voiceless, who have known 
The cross without the crown of glory ! 

Not where Leucadian breezes sweep 
O'er Sappho's memory-haunted billow, 

But where the glistening night-dews weep 
On nameless sorrow's churchyard pillow. 

O hearts that break and give no sign 

Save whitening lip and fading tresses, 
Till Death pours out his cordial wine 

Slow-dropped from Misery's crushing 
presses — 
If singing breath or echoing chord 

To every hidden pang were given, 
What endless melodies were poured, 

As sad as earth, as sweet as heaven ! 



ALFRED BILLINGS STREET 

53 The Settler 

His echoing axe the settler swung 

Amid the sea-like solitude, 
And, rushing, thundering, down were flung 

The Titans of the wood ; 
Loud shrieked the eagle, as he dashed 
From out his mossy nest, which crashed 

With its supporting bough, 
And the first sunlight, leaping, flashed 

On the wolf's haunt below. 

Rude was the garb and strong the frame 
Of him who plied his ceaseless toil : 

To form that garb the wildwood game 
Contributed their spoil ; 

The soul that warmed that frame disdained 

The tinsel, gaud, and glare that reigned 
Where men their crowds collect ; 
1 68 



ALFRED BILLINGS STREET 169 

The simple fur, untrimmed, unstained, 
This forest-tamer decked. 

The paths which wound mid gorgeous trees, 

The stream whose bright lips kissed their 
flowers, 
The winds that swelled their harmonies 

Through those sun-hiding bowers, 
The temple vast, the green arcade, 
The nestling vale, the grassy glade, 

Dark cave, and swampy lair ; 
These scenes and sounds majestic made 

His world, his pleasures, there. . 

His roof adorned a pleasant spot ; 

Mid the black logs green glowed the grain, 
And herbs and plants the woods knew not 

Throve in the sun and rain. 
The smoke-wreath curling o'er the dell, 
The low, the bleat, the tinkling bell,' 

All made a landscape strange, 
Which was the living chronicle 

Of deeds that wrought the change. 



170 ALFRED BILLINGS STREET 

The violet sprung at spring's first tinge, 

The rose of summer spread its glow, 
The maize hung out its autumn fringe, 

Rude winter brought his snow ; 
And still the lone one labored there, 
His shout and whistle broke the air, 

As cheerily he plied 
His garden-spade, or drove his share 

Along the hillock's side. 

He marked the fire-storm's blazing flood 

Roaring and crackling on its path, 
And scorching earth, and melting wood, 

Beneath its greedy wrath ; 
He marked the rapid whirlwind shoot, 
Trampling the pine-tree with its foot, 

And darkening thick the day 
With streaming bough and severed root, 

Hurled whizzing on its way. 

His gaunt hound yelled, his rifle flashed, 
The grim bear hushed his savage growl 

In blood and foam the panther gnashed 
His fangs, with dying howl ; 



ALFRED BILLINGS STREET 171 

The fleet deer ceased its flying bound, 
Its snarling wolf-foe bit the ground, 

And, with its moaning cry, 
The beaver sank beneath the wound 

Its pond-built Venice by. 

Humble the lot, yet his the race, 

When Liberty sent forth her cry, 
Who thronged in conflict's deadliest place, 

To fight, — to bleed, — to die ! 
Who cumbered Bunker's height of red, 
By hope through weary years were led, 

And witnessed Yorktown's sun 
Blaze on a nation's banner spread, 

A nation's freedom won. 



FRANCES SARGENT OSGOOD 

54 Labor 

Pause not to dream of the future before us; 
Pause not to weep the wild cares that come o'er 

us ; 
Hark, how Creation's deep, musical chorus, 

Unintermitting, goes up into heaven ! 
Never the ocean wave falters in flowing ; 
Never the little seed stops in its growing ; 
More and more richly the rose-heart keeps 
glowing, 

Till from its nourishing stem it is riven. 

" Labor is worship ! " — the robin is singing ; 
" Labor is worship ! " — the wild bee is ringing ; 
Listen ! that eloquent whisper, upspringing, 
Speaks to thy soul from out Nature's great 
heart. 
From the dark cloud flows the life-giving 
shower ; 

172 



FRANCES SARGENT OSGOOD 173 

From the rpugh sod blows the soft-breathing 

flower ; 
From the small insect, the rich coral bower ; 
Only man in the plan shrinks from his part. 

Labor is life ! — 'tis the still water f aileth ; 
Idleness ever despaireth, bewaileth ; 
Keep the watch wound, for the dark rust 
assaileth ; 
Flowers droop and die in the stillness of 
noon. 
Labor is glory ! — the flying cloud lightens ; 
Only the waving wing changes and brightens ; 
Idle hearts # only the dark future frightens ; 
Play the sweet keys, wouldst thou keep them 
♦ in tune ! 

Labor is rest, — from the sorrows that greet us ; 
Rest from all petty vexations that meet us ; , 
Rest from sin-promptings that ever entreat us ; 

Rest from world-sirens that lure us to ill. 
Work, — and pure slumbers shall wait on thy 
pillow ; 



174 FRANCES SARGENT OSGOOD 

Work, — thou shalt ride over Care's coming 
billow : 

Lie not down wearied 'neath Woe's weeping- 
willow ! 
Work with a stout heart and resolute will ! 

Labor is health ! — Lo ! the husbandman reap- 
ing, 

How through his veins goes the life-current 
leaping ! 

How his strong arm in his stalwart pride sweep- 
ing, 
True as a sunbeam the swift sickle guides. 

Labor is wealth, — in the sea the pearl groweth ; 

Rich the queen's robe from the frail cocoon 
floweth ; 

From the fine acorn the strong forest bloweth ; 
Temple and statue the marble block hides. 

Droop not, — though shame, sin, and anguish 

are round thee ! 
Bravely fling off the cold chain that hath bound 

thee ! 



FRANCES SARGENT OSGOOD 175 

Look to yon pure heaven smiling beyond thee ! 

Rest not content in thy darkness, — a clod ! 
Work for some good, be it ever so slowly ! 
Cherish some flower, be it ever so lowly ! 
Labor ! — all labor is noble and holy ; 

Let thy great deeds be thy prayer to thy 
God. 



HENRY THEODORE TUCKERMAN 

55 To an Elm 

Bravely thy old arms fling 
Their countless pennons to the fields of air, 

And, like a sylvan king,. 
Their panoply of green still proudly wear. 

As some rude tower of old, 
Their massive trunk still rears its rugged form, 

With limbs of giant mould, 
To battle sternly with the winter storm. 

In Nature's mighty fane, 
Thou art the noblest arch beneath the sky ; 

How long the pilgrim train 
That with a benison have passed thee by ! 

Lone patriarch of the wood ! 
Like a true spirit thou dost freely rise, 

Of fresh and dauntless mood, 
Spreading thy branches to the open skies. 

176 



HENRY THEODORE TUCKERMAN 1 77 

The locust knows thee well, 
And when the summer days his notes prolong, 

Hid in some leafy cell, 
Pours from thy world of green his drowsy song. 

Oft, on a morn in spring, 
The yellow-bird will seek thy waving spray, 

And there securely swing, 
To whet his beak, and pour his blithesome lay. 

How bursts thy monarch wail, 
When sleeps the pulse of Nature's buoyant life, 

And, bared to meet the gale, 
Wave thy old branches, eager for the strife ! 

The sunset often weaves 
Upon thy crest a wreath of splendor rare, 

While the fresh-murmuring leaves 
Fill with cool sound the evening's sultry air. 

Sacred thy roof of green 
To rustic dance, and childhood's gambols free ; 

Gay youth and age serene 
Turn with familiar gladness unto thee. 



178 HENRY THEODORE TUCKERMAN 

Oh, hither should we roam, 
To hear Truth's herald in the lofty shade ; 

Beneath thy emerald dome 
Might Freedom's champion fitly draw his blade. 

With blessings at thy feet, 
Falls the worn peasant to his noontide rest ; 

Thy verdant, calm retreat 
Inspires the sad and soothes the troubled breast 

When, at the twilight hour, 
Plays through thy tressil crown the sun's last 
gleam, 

Under thy ancient bower 
The schoolboy comes to sport, the bard to dream. 

And when the moonbeams fall 
Through thy broad canopy upon the grass, 

Making a fairy hall, 
As o'er the sward the flitting shadows pass — 

Then lovers haste to thee, 
With hearts that tremble like that shifting light ; 

To them, O brave old tree, 
Thou art Joy's shrine — a temple of delight ! 



CHRISTOPHER PEARSE CRANCH 

56 The Bobolinks 

When Nature had made all her birds, 
With no more cares to think on, 

She gave a rippling laugh, and out 
There flew a Bobolinkon. 

She laughed again ; out flew a mate ; 

A breeze of Eden bore them 
Across the fields of Paradise, 

The sunrise reddening o'er them. 

Incarnate sport and holiday, 

They flew and sang forever ; 
Their souls through June were all in tune, 

Their wings were weary never. 

Their tribe, still drunk with air and light, 
And perfume of the meadow, 

Go reeling up and down the sky, 
In sunshine and in shadow. 
179 



180 CHRISTOPHER PEARSE CRANCH 

One springs from out the dew-wet grass ; 

Another follows after ; 
The morn is thrilling with their songs 

And peals of fairy laughter. 

From out the marshes and the brook, 
They set the tall reeds swinging, 

And meet and frolic in the air, 
Half prattling and half singing. 

When morning winds sweep meadow-lands 

In green and russet billows, 
And toss the lonely elm-tree's boughs, 

And silver all the willows, 

I see you buffeting the breeze, 

Or with its motion swaying, 
Your notes half drowned against the wind, 

Or down the current playing. 

When far away o'er grassy flats, 
Where the thick wood commences, 

The white-sleeved mowers look like specks 
Beyond the zigzag fences, 



CHRISTOPHER PEARSE CRANCH 181 

And noon is hot, and barn-roofs gleam 
White in the pale blue distance, 

I hear the saucy minstrels still 
In chattering persistence. 

When Eve her domes of opal fire 

Piles round the blue horizon, 
Or thunder rolls from hill to hill 

A Kyrie Eleison, 

Still merriest of the merry birds, 

Your sparkle is unfading, — 
Pied harlequins of June, — no end 

Of song and masquerading, 

What cadences of bubbling mirth, 
Too quick for bar and rhythm ! 

What ecstasies, too full to keep 
Coherent measure with them ! 

O could I share, without champagne 

Or muscadel, your frolic, 
The glad delirium of your joy, 

Your fun unapostolic, 



182 CHRISTOPHER PEARSE CRANCH 

Your drunken jargon through the fields, 

Your bobolinkish gabble, 
Your fine Anacreontic glee, 

Your tipsy reveller's babble ! 

Nay, let me not profane such joy 

With similes of folly ; 
No wine of earth could waken songs 

So delicately jolly ! 

O boundless self-contentment, voiced 

In flying air-born bubbles ! 
O joy that mocks our sad unrest, 

And drowns our earth-born troubles ! 

Hope springs with you : I dread no more 

Despondency and dulness ; 
For Good Supreme can never fail 

That gives such perfect fulness. 

The life that floods the happy fields 
With song and light and color 

Will shape our lives to richer states, 
And heap our measures fuller. 



HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 

57 Only a Year 

One year ago, — a ringing voice, 

A clear blue eye, 
And clustering curls of sunny hair, 

Too fair to die. 

Only a year, — no voice, no smile, 

No glance of eye, 
No clustering curls of golden hair, 

Fair but to die ! 

One year ago, — what loves, what schemes 

Far into life ! 
What joyous hopes, what high resolves, 

What generous strife ! 

The silent picture on the wall, 

The burial-stone 
Of all that beauty, life, and joy, 

Remain alone ! 
183 



1 84 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 

One year, — one year, — one little year, 

And so much gone ! 
And yet the even flow of life 

Moves calmly on. 

The grave grows green, the flowers bloom fair, 

Above that head ; 
No sorrowing tint of leaf or spray 

Says he is dead. 

No pause or hush of merry birds 

That sing above 
Tells us how coldly sleeps below 

The form we love. 

Where hast thou been this year, beloved ? 

What hast thou seen, — 
What visions fair, what glorious life, 

Where thou hast been ? 

The veil ! the veil ! so thin, so strong ! 

'Twixt us and thee ; 
The mystic veil ! when shall it fall, 

That we may see ? 



HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 185 

Not dead, not sleeping, not even gone, 

But present still, 
And waiting for the coming hour 

Of God's sweet will. 

Lord of the living and the dead, 

Our Saviour dear ! 
We lay in silence at thy feet 

This sad, sad year. 



PHILIP PENDLETON COOKE 

58 Life in the Autumn Woods 

[VIRGINIA] 

Summer has gone, 
And fruitful Autumn has advanced so far 
That there is warmth, not heat, in the broad 

sun, 
And you may look, with naked eye, upon 

The ardors of his car ; 
The stealthy frosts, whom his spent looks em- 
bolden, 

Are making the green leaves golden. 

What a brave splendor 
Is in the October air ! how rich, and clear, 
And bracing, and all-joyous! We must render 
Love to the Spring-time, with its sproutings 
tender, 

As to a child quite dear ; 
186 



PHILIP PENDLETON COOKE 187 

But Autumn is a thing of perfect glory, 
A manhood not yet hoary. 

I love the woods, 
In this good season of the liberal year ; 
I love to seek their leafy solitudes, 
And give myself to melancholy moods, 

With no intruder near, 
And find strange lessons, as I sit and ponder, 

In every natural wonder. 

But not alone, 
As Shakespeare's melancholy courtier loved 

Ardennes, 
Love I the browning forest ; and I own 
I would not oft have mused, as he, but flown 

To hunt with Amiens — 
And little thought, as up the bold deer bounded, 

Of the sad creature wounded. 

A brave and good, 
But world-worn knight — soul-wearied with his 

part 
In this vexed life — gave man for solitude, 



1 88 PHILIP PENDLETON COOKE 

And built a lodge, and lived in Wantley wood, 

To hear the belling hart. 
It was a gentle taste, but its sweet sadness 

Yields to the hunter's madness. 

What passionate 
And keen delight is in the proud swift chase ! 
Go out what time the lark at heaven's red gate 
Soars joyously singing — quite infuriate 

With the high pride of his place ; 
What time the unrisen sun arrays the morning 

In its first bright adorning. 

Hark! the quick horn — 
As sweet to hear as any clarion — 
Piercing with silver call the ear of morn ; 
And mark the steeds, stout Curtal and Top- 
thorne, 

And Greysteil and the Don — 
Each one of them his fiery mood displaying 

With pawing and with neighing. 

Urge your swift horse 
After the crying hounds in this fresh hour ; 



PHILIP PENDLETON COOKE 189 

Vanquish high hills, stem perilous streams per- 
force, 
On the free plain give free wings to your 
course, 

And you will know the power 
Of the brave chase, — and how of griefs the 
sorest 

A cure is in the forest. 



Or stalk the deer ; 
The same red lip of dawn has kissed the hills, 
The gladdest sounds are crowding on your ear, 
There is a life in all the atmosphere : — 

Your very nature fills 
With the fresh hour, as up the hills aspiring 

You climb with limbs untiring. 

It is a fair 
And goodly sight to see the antlered stag 
With the long sweep of his swift walk repair 
To join his brothers ; or the plethoric bear 

Lying in some high crag, 



190 PHILIP PENDLETON COOKE 

With pinky eyes half closed, but broad head 
shaking, 

As gadflies keep him waking. 

And these you see, 
And, seeing them, you travel to their death 
With a slow, stealthy step, from tree to tree, 
Noting the wind, however faint it be» 

The hunter draws a breath 
In times like these, which, he will say, repays 
him 

For all care that waylays him. 

A strong joy fills 
(A joy beyond the tongue's expressive power) 
My heart in Autumn weather — fills and thrills ! 
And I would rather stalk the breezy hills 

Descending to my bower 
Nightly, by the sweet spirit of Peace attended, 

Than pine where life is splendid. 



EMILY CHUBBUCK JUDSON 

59 Watching 

Sleep, love, sleep ! 
The dusty day is done. 

Lo ! from afar the freshening breezes sweep 
Wide over groves of balm, 
Down from the towering palm, 
In at the open casement cooling run, 
And round thy lowly bed, 
Thy bed of pain, 
Bathing thy patient head, 
Like grateful showers of rain, 
They come ; 

While the white curtains, waving to and fro, 
Fan the sick air ; 

And pityingly the shadows come and go, 
With gentle human care, 
Compassionate and dumb. 

191 



192 EMILY CHUBBUCK JUDSON 

The dusty day is done, 

The night begun ; 

While prayerful watch I keep, 

Sleep, love, sleep ! 

Is there no magic in the touch 

Of fingers thou dost love so much ? 

Fain would they scatter poppies o'er thee now ; 

Or, with its mute caress, 

The tremulous lip some soft nepenthe press 

Upon thy weary lid and aching brow ; 

While prayerful watch I keep, 

Sleep, love, sleep ! 

On the pagoda spire 

The bells are swinging, 

Their little golden circlet in a flutter 

With tales the wooing winds have dared to 

utter, 
Till all are ringing, 
As if a choir 

Of golden-nested birds in heaven were singing, 
And with a lulling sound 
The music floats around, 



EMILY CHUBBUCK JUDSON 193 

And drops like balm into the drowsy ear ; 

Commingling with the hum 

Of the Sepoy's distant drum, 

And lazy beetle ever droning near. 

Sounds these of deepest silence born, 

Like night made visible by morn ; 

So silent that I sometimes start 

To hear the throbbings of my heart, 

And watch, with shivering sense of pain, 

To see thy pale lids lift again. 

The lizard, with his mouse-like eyes, 

Peeps from the mortise in surprise 

At such strange quiet after day's harsh din ; 

Then boldly ventures out, 

And looks about, 

And with his hollow feet 

Treads his small evening beat, 

Darting upon his prey 

In such a tricky, winsome sort of way, 

His delicate marauding seems no sin. 

And still the curtains swing, 

But noiselessly ; 



194 EMILY CHUBBUCK JUDSON 

The bells a melancholy murmur ring, 
As tears were in the sky : 
More heavily the shadows fall, 
Like the black foldings of a pall, 
Where juts the rough beam from the wall; 
The candles flare 
With fresher gusts of air ; 
The beetle's drone 
Turns to a dirge-like, solitary moan ; 
Night deepens, and I sit, in cheerless doubt 
alone. 



JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND 
60 Cradle Song 

FROM "BITTER SWEET" 

What is the little one thinking about ? 
Very wonderful things, no doubt ; 
Unwritten history ! 
Unfathomed mystery ! 
Yet he laughs and cries, and eats and drinks, 
And chuckles, and crows, and nods, and winks, 
As if his head were as full of kinks 
And curious riddles as any sphinx ! 
Warped by colic, and wet by tears, 
Punctured by pins, and tortured by fears, 
Our little nephew will lose two years ; 
And he'll never know 
Where the summers go ; — 
He need not laugh, for he'll find it so. 

Who can tell what a baby thinks ? 
Who can follow the gossamer links 

By which the manikin feels his way 
195 



196 JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND 

Out from the shore of the great unknown, 
Blind, and wailing, and alone, 

Into the light of day ? — 
Out from the shore of the unknown sea, 
Tossing in pitiful agony, — 
Of the unknown sea that reels and rolls, 
Specked with the barks of little souls — 
Barks that were launched on the other side, 
And slipped from heaven on an ebbing tide ! 

What does he think of his mother's eyes ? 
What does he think of his mother's hair ? 

What of the cradle-roof, that flies 
Forward and backward through the air ? 

What does he think of his mother's breast — 
Bare and beautiful, smooth and white, 
Seeking it ever with fresh delight — 

Cup of his life, and couch of his rest ? 
What does he think when her quick embrace 
Presses his hand and buries his face 
Deep where the heart-throbs sink and swell, 
With a tenderness she can never tell, 

Though she murmur the words 

Of all the birds — 



JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND 197 

Words she has learned to murmur well ? 
Now he thinks he'll go to sleep ! 
I can see the shadow creep 
Over his eyes in soft eclipse, 
Over his brow and over his lips. 
Out to his little finger-tips ! 
Softly sinking, down he goes ! 
Down he goes ! down he goes ! 
See ! he's hushed in sweet repose, 



HARRIET WINSLOW SEWALL 

6 1 Why thus Longing? 

Why thus longing, thus forever sighing, 
For the far-off, unattained and dim, 

While the beautiful, all round thee lying, 
Offers up its low, perpetual hymn ? 

Would 'st thou listen to its gentle teaching, 
All thy restless yearnings it would still ; 

Leaf and flower and laden bee are preaching 
Thine own sphere, though humble, first to fill, 

Poor indeed thou must be, if around thee 
Thou no ray of light and joy canst throw — 

If no silken cord of love hath bound thee 
To some little world through weal and woe ; 

If no dear eyes thy fond love can brighten — 
No fond voices answer to thine own ; 

If no brother's sorrow thou canst lighten, 
By daily sympathy and gentle tone. 

198 



HARRIET WINSLOW SEWALL 199 

Not by deeds that gain the world's applauses, 
Not by works that win thee world-renown, 

Not by martyrdom or vaunted crosses, 

Canst thou win and wear the immortal crown ! 

Daily struggling, though unloved and lonely, 
Every day a rich reward will give ; 

Thou wilt find, by hearty striving only, 
And truly loving, thou canst truly live. 

Dost thou revel in the rosy morning, 
When all nature hails the lord of light, 

And his smile, the mountain tops adorning, 
Robes yon fragrant fields in radiance bright ? 

Other hands may grasp the field and forest, 
Proud proprietors in pomp may shine ; 

But with fervent love if thou adorest, 

Thou art wealthier — all the world is thine. 

Yet if through earth's wide domains thou rovest, 
Sighing that they are not thine alone, 

Not those fair fields, but thyself, thou lovest, 
And their beauty and thy wealth are gone. 



200 HARRIET WINSLOW SEWALL 

Nature wears the color of the spirit ; 

Sweetly to her worshipper she sings ; 
All the glow, the grace she doth inherit, 

Round her trusting child she fondly flings, 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

62 To the Dandelion 

Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the 
way, 
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold, 

First pledge of blithesome May, 
Which children pluck, and, full of pride, uphold, 
High-hearted buccaneers, o'erjoyed that they 
An Eldorado in the grass have found, 
Which not the rich earth's ample round 

May match in wealth, — thou art more dear 

to me 
Than all the prouder summer-blooms may be. 

Gold such as thine ne'er drew the Spanish 

prow 

Through the primeval hush of Indian seas, 

Nor wrinkled the lean brow 

Of age, to rob the lover's heart of ease ; 

'Tis the spring's largess, which she scatters 

now 

201 



202 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

To rich and poor alike, with lavish hand, 
Though most hearts never understand 
To take it at God's value, but pass by 
The offered wealth with unrewarded eye. 



Thou art my tropics and mine Italy ; 
To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime; 

The eyes thou givest me 
Are in the heart, and heed not space or time : 

Not in mid June the golden-cuirassed bee 
Feels a more summer-like warm ravishment 
In the white lily's breezy tent, 

His fragrant Sybaris, than I, when first 

From the dark green thy yellow circles burst. 

Then think I of deep shadows on the grass, — 
Of meadows where in sun the cattle graze, 

Where, as the breezes pass, 
The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways, — 

Of leaves that slumber in a cloudy mass, 
Or whiten in the wind, — of waters blue 
That from the distance sparkle through 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 203 

Some woodland gap, — and of a sky above, v 
Where one white cloud like a stray lamb doth 
move. 

My childhood's earliest thoughts are linked 
with thee ; 
The sight of thee calls back the robin's song, 

Who, from the dark old tree 
Beside the door, sang clearly all day long, 

And I, secure in childish piety, 
Listened as if I heard an angel sing 
With news from heaven, which he could bring 
Fresh every day to my untainted ears, 
When birds and flowers and I were happy 
peers. 

How like a prodigal doth nature seem, 
When thou, for all thy gold, so common art! 

Thou teachest me to deem 
More sacredly of every human heart, 

Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam 
Of heaven, and could some wondrous secret show 
Did we but pay the love we owe, 

And with a child's undoubting wisdom look 

On all these living pages of God's book. 



204 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

63 Rhcecus 

God sends his teachers unto every age, 
To every clime, and every race of men, 
With revelations fitted to their growth 
And shape of mind, nor gives the realm of 

Truth 
Into the selfish rule of one sole race : 
Therefore each form of worship that hath 

swayed 
The life of man, and given it to grasp 
The master-key of knowledge, reverence, 
Enfolds some germs of goodness and of right ; 
Else never had the eager soul, which loathes 
The slothful down of pampered ignorance, 
Found in it even a moment's fitful rest. 

There is an instinct in the human heart 
Which makes that all the fables it hath coined, 
To justify the reign of its belief 
And strengthen it by beauty's right divine, 
Veil in their inner cells a mystic gift, 
Which, like the hazel twig, in faithful hands, 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 205 

Points surely to the hidden springs of truth. 

For, as in nature naught is made in vain, 

But all things have within their hull of use 

A wisdom and a meaning which may speak 

Of spiritual secrets to the ear 

Of spirit ; so, in whatsoe'er the heart 

Hath fashioned for solace to itself, 

To make its inspirations suit its creed, 

And from the niggard hands of falsehood wring 

Its needful food of truth, there ever is 

A sympathy with Nature, which reveals, 

Not less than her own works, pure gleams of 

light 
And earnest parables of inward lore. 
Hear now this fairy legend of old Greece, 
As full of freedom, youth, and beauty still 
As the immortal freshness of that grace 
Carved for all ages on some Attic frieze. 

A youth named Rhoecus, wandering in the 
wood, 
Saw an old oak just trembling to its fall, 
And, feeling pity of so fair a tree, 
He propped its gray trunk with admiring care, 



206 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

And with a thoughtless footstep loitered on. 
But, as he turned, he heard a voice behind 
That murmured " Rhoecus ! " 'Twas as if the 

leaves, 
Stirred by a passing breath, had murmured it, 
And, while he paused bewildered, yet again 
It murmured " Rhoecus ! " softer than a breeze. 
He started and beheld with dizzy eyes 
What seemed the substance of a happy dream 
Stand there before him, spreading a warm glow 
Within the green glooms of the shadowy oak. 
It seemed a woman's shape, yet all too fair 
To be a woman, and with eyes too meek 
For any that were wont to mate with gods. 
All naked like a goddess stood she there, 
And like a goddess all too beautiful 
To feel the guilt-born earthliness of shame. 
" Rhoecus, I am the Dryad of this tree," 
Thus she began, dropping her low-toned words 
Serene, and full, and clear, as drops of dew, 
"And with it I am doomed to live and die; 
The rain and sunshine are my caterers, 
Nor have I other bliss than simple life ; 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 207 

Now ask me what thou wilt, that I can give, 
And with a thankful joy it shall be thine." 

Then Rhoecus, with a flutter at the heart, 
Yet, by the prompting of such beauty, bold, 
Answered : " What is there that can satisfy 
The endless craving of the soul but love ? 
Give me thy love, or but the hope of that 
Which must be evermore my spirit's goal." 
After a little pause she said again, 
But with a glimpse of sadness in her tone, 
" I give it, Rhoecus, though a perilous gift ; 
An hour before the sunset meet me here." 
And straightway there was nothing he could see 
But the green glooms beneath the shadowy oak, 
And not a sound came to his straining ears 
But the low trickling rustle of the leaves, 
And far away upon an emerald slope 
The falter of an idle shepherd's pipe. 

Now, in those days of simpleness and faith, 
Men did not think that happy things were 

dreams 
Because they overstepped the narrow bourne 



208 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

Of likelihood, but reverently deemed 

Nothing too wondrous or too beautiful 

To be the guerdon of a daring heart. 

So Rhoecus made no doubt that he was blest, 

And all along unto the city's gate 

Earth seemed to spring beneath him as he 

walked, 
The clear, broad sky looked bluer than its wont, 
And he could scarce believe he had not wings 
Such sunshine seemed to glitter through his veins 
Instead of blood, so light he felt and strange. 

Young Rhoecus had a faithful heart enough, 
But one that in the present dwelt too much, 
And, taking with blithe welcome whatsoe'er 
Chance gave of joy, was wholly bound in that, 
Like the contented peasant of a vale, 
Deemed it the world, and never looked beyond. 
So, haply meeting in the afternoon 
Some comrades who were playing at the dice, 
He joined them and forgot all else beside. 

The dice were rattling at the merriest, 
And Rhoecus, who had met but sorry luck, 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 209 

Just laughed in triumph at a happy throw, 
When through the room there hummed a yellow 

bee 
That buzzed about his ear with down-dropped 

legs 
As if to light. And Rhoecus laughed and said, 
Feeling how red and flushed he was with loss, 
" By Venus ! does he take me for a rose ? " 
And brushed him off with rough, impatient 

hand. 
But still the bee came back, and thrice again 
Rhoecus did beat him off with growing wrath. 
Then through the window flew the wounded 

bee, 
And Rhoecus, tracking him with angry eyes, 
Saw a sharp mountain-peak of Thessaly 
Against the red disk of the setting sun, — 
And instantly the blood sank from his heart, 
As if its very walls had caved away. 
Without a word he turned, and, rushing forth, 
Ran madly through the city and the gate, 
And o'er the plain, which now the wood's long 

shade, 



210 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

By the low sun thrown forward broad and dim, 
Darkened well-nigh unto the city's wall. 

Quite spent and out of breath he reached the 
tree, 
And, listening fearfully, he heard once more 
The low voice murmur " Rhoecus ! " close at 

hand : 
Whereat he looked around him, but could see 
Naught but the deepening glooms beneath the 

oak. 
Then sighed the voice, " Oh, Rhoecus ! never- 
more 
Shalt thou behold me or by day or night, 
Me, w.ho would fain have blessed thee with a 

love 
More ripe and bounteous than ever yet 
Filled up with nectar any mortal heart : 
But thou didst scorn my humble messenger, 
And sent'st him back to me with bruised 

wings. 
We spirits only show to gentle eyes. 
We ever ask an undivided love, 
And he who scorns tfie least of Nature's works 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 211 

Is thenceforth exiled and shut out from all. 
Farewell! for thou canst never see me more." 

Then Rhoecus beat his breast, and groaned 

aloud 
And cried, " Be pitiful ! forgive me yet 
This once, and I shall never need it more ! " 
" Alas ! " the voice returned, " 'tis thou art 

blind, 
Not I unmerciful ; I can forgive, 
But have no skill to heal thy spirit's eyes ; 
Only the soul hath power o'er itself." 
With that again there murmured " Nevermore ! " 
And Rhoecus after heard no other sound, 
Except the rattling of the oak's crisp leaves, 
Like the long surf upon a distant shore, 
Raking the sea-worn pebbles up and down. 
The night had gathered round him: o'er the 

plain 
The city sparkled with its thousand lights, 
And sounds of revel fell upon his ear 
Harshly and like a curse ; above, the sky, 
With all its bright sublimity of stars, 



212 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

Deepened, and on his forehead smote the breeze; 
Beauty was all around him and delight, 
But from that eve he was alone on earth. 



64 The Present Crisis 

When a deed is done for Freedom, through the 

broad earth's aching breast 
Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on 

from east to west, 
And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels the 

soul within him climb 
To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy 

sublime 
Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the 

thorny stem of Time. 

Through the walls of hut and palace shoots the 
instantaneous throe, 

When the travail of the Ages wrings earth's 
systems to and fro ; 

At the birth of each new Era, with a recogniz- 
ing start, 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 213 

Nation wildly looks at nation, standing with 

mute lips apart, 
And glad Truth's yet mightier man-child leaps 

beneath the Future's heart. 



So the Evil's triumph sendeth, with a terror 

and a chill, 
Under continent to continent, the sense of 

coming ill, 
And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels his 

sympathies with God 
In hot tear-drops ebbing earthward, to be drunk 

up by the sod, 
Till a corpse crawls round unburied, delving 

in the nobler clod. 



For mankind are one in spirit, and an instinct 
bears along, 

Round the earth's electric circle, the swift flush 
of right or wrong ; 

Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Human- 
ity's vast frame 



214 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

Through its ocean-sundered fibres feels the 

gush of joy or shame; — 
In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have 

equal claim. 



Once to every man and nation comes the mo- 
ment to decide, 

In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the 
good or evil side ; 

Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering 
each the bloom or blight, 

Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the 
sheep upon the right, 

And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that 
darkness and that light. 

Hast thou chosen, O my people, on whose 

party thou shalt stand, 
Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes 

the dust against our land ? 
Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet 'tis 

Truth alone is strong, 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 21 5 

And, albeit she wander outcast now, I see 

around her throng 
Troops of beautiful, tall angels, to enshield her 

from all wrong. 



Backward look across the ages and the beacon- 
moments see, 

That, like peaks of some sunk continent, jut 
through Oblivion's sea ; 

Not an ear in court or market for the low fore- 
boding cry 

Of those Crises, God's stern winnowers, from 
whose feet earth's chaff must fly ; 

Never shows the choice momentous till the 
judgment hath passed by. 

Careless seems the great Avenger; history's 

pages but record 
One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old 

systems and the Word ; 
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever 

on the throne, — 



2l6 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

Yet that scaffold sways the Future, and, behind 

the dim unknown, 
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping 

watch above his own. 



We see dimly in the Present what is small and 
what is great, 

Slow of faith, how weak an arm may turn the 
iron helm of fate, 

But the soul is still oracular ; amid the market's 
din, 

List the ominous stern whisper from the Del- 
phic cave within, — 

"They enslave their children's children who 
make compromise with sin." 

Slavery, the earthborn Cyclops, fellest of the 

giant brood, 
Sons of brutish Force and Darkness, who have 

drenched the earth with blood, 
Famished in his self-made desert, blinded by 

our purer day, 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 217 

Gropes in yet unblasted regions for his misera- 
ble prey ; — 

Shall we guide his gory fingers where our help- 
less children play ? 



Then to side with Truth is noble when we 

share her wretched crust, 
Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis 

prosperous to be just ; 
Then it is the brave man chooses, while the 

coward stands aside, 
Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is 

crucified, 
And the multitude make virtue of the faith 

they had denied. 

Count me o'er earth's chosen heroes, — they 

were souls that stood alone, 
While the men they agonized for hurled the 

contumelious stone, 
Stood serene, and down the future saw the 

golden beam incline 



218 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

To the side of perfect justice, mastered by their 

faith divine, 
By one man's plain truth to manhood and to 

God's supreme design. 



By the light of burning heretics Christ's bleed- 
ing feet I track, 

Toiling up new Calvaries ever with the cross 
that turns not back, 

And these mounts of anguish number how each 
generation learned 

One new word of that grand Credo which in 
prophet-hearts hath burned 

Since the first man stood God-conquered with 
his face to heaven upturned. 

For Humanity sweeps onward : where to day 

the martyr stands, 
On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver 

in his hands ; 
Far in front the cross stands ready and the 

crackling fagots burn, 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 219 

While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent 

awe return 
To glean up the scattered ashes into History's 

golden urn. 



Tis as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle 
slaves 

Of a legendary virtue carved upon our fathers' 
graves, 

Worshippers of light ancestral make the pres- 
ent light a crime ; — 

Was the Mayflower launched by cowards, 
steered by men behind their time ? 

Turn those tracks toward Past or Future, that 
make Plymouth rock sublime ? 

They were men of present valor, stalwart old 

iconoclasts, 
Unconvinced by axe or gibbet that all virtue 

was the Past's; 
But we make their truth our falsehood, thinking 

that hath made us free, 



220 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

Hoarding it in mouldy parchments, while our 

tender spirits flee 
The rude grasp of that great Impulse which 

drove them across the sea. 



They have rights who dare maintain them ; we 
are traitors to our sires, 

Smothering in their holy ashes Freedom's new- 
lit altar-fires ; 

Shall we make their creed our jailer? Shall 
we, in our haste to slay, 

From the tombs of the old prophets steal the 
funeral lamps away 

To light up the martyr-fagots round the proph- 
ets of to-day ? 

New occasions teach new duties ; Time makes 
ancient good uncouth ; 

They must upward still, and onward, who 
would keep abreast of Truth; 

Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires ! we our- 
selves must Pilgrims be, 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 221 

Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly 
through the desperate winter sea, 

Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's 
blood-rusted key. 
December, 1845. 

65 She Came and Went 

As a twig trembles, which a bird 

Lights on to sing, then leaves unbent, 

So is my memory thrilled and stirred ; — 
I only know she came and went. 

As clasps some lake, by gusts unriven, 
The blue dome's measureless content, 

So my soul held that moment's heaven ; — 
I only know she came and went. 

As, at one bound, our swift spring heaps 
The orchards full of bloom and scent, 

So clove her May my wintry sleeps ; — 
I only know she came and went. 

An angel stood and met my gaze, 

Through the low doorway of my tent ; 



222 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

The tent is struck, the vision stays ; — 
I only know she came and went. 

O, when the room grows slowly dim, 
And life's last oil is nearly spent, 

One gush of light these eyes will brim, 
Only to think she came and went. 



WALT WHITMAN 

66 What is the Grass ? 

FROM "WALT WHITMAN" 

A child said, What is the grass ? fetching it to 

me with full hands ; 
How could I answer the child ? I do not know 

what it is, any more than he. 

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, 
out of hopeful green stuff woven. 

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord, 
A scented gift and remembrancer, designedly 

dropped, 
Bearing the owner's name someway in the cor- 
ners, that we may see and remark, and say 
Whose ? 

Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the 
produced babe of the vegetation. 
223 



224 WALT WHITMAN 

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic, 

And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones 

and narrow zones, 
Growing among black folks as among white, 
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give 

them the same, I receive them the same. 

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut 
hair of graves. 

Tenderly will I use you, curling grass, 

It may be you transpire from the breasts of 

young men, 
It may be if I had known them I would have 

loved them, 
It may be you are from old people, and from 

women, and from offspring taken soon out 

of their mothers' laps, 
And here you are the mothers' laps. 

This grass is very dark to be from the white 

heads of old mothers, 
Darker than the colorless beards of old men, 
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of 

mouths. 



WALT WHITMAN 225 

I perceive after all so many uttering tongues ! 
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs 

of mouths for nothing. 

1 wish I could translate the hints about the dead 

young men and women, 
And the hints about old men and mothers, and 
the offspring taken soon out of their laps. 

What do you think has become of the young 

and old men ? 
And what do you think has become of the 

women and children ? 

They are alive and well somewhere, 

The smallest sprout shows there is really no 

death, 
And if ever there was, it led forward life, and 

does not wait at the end to arrest it, 
And ceased the moment life appeared. 

All goes onward and outward — nothing col- 
lapses, 

And to die is different from what any one sup- 
posed, and luckier. 



226 WALT WHITMAN 

Has any one supposed it lucky to be born ? 
I hasten to inform him or her, it is just as lucky 
to die, and I know it. 

I pass death with the dying, and birth with the 

new-washed babe, and am not contained 

between my hat and boots, 
And peruse manifold objects, no two alike, and 

every one good, 
The earth good, and the stars good, and their 

adjuncts all good. 

I am not an earth, nor an adjunct of an earth, 
I am the mate and companion of people, all just 

as immortal and fathomless as myself ; 
They do not know how immortal, but I know. 



In all people I see myself — none more, and not 

one a barleycorn le&s, 
And the good or bad I say of myself I say of 

them. 



WALT WHITMAN 227 

And I know I am solid and sound, 

To me the converging objects of the universe 

perpetually flow, 
All are written to me, and I must get what the 

writing means. 

I know I am deathless, 

I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a 

carpenter's compass, 
I know I shall not pass like a child's carlacue 

cut with a burnt stick at night. 



My foothold is tenoned and mortised in granite, 
I laugh at what you call dissolution, 
And I know the amplitude of time. 



I open my scuttle at night and see the far- 
sprinkled systems, 

And all I see, multiplied as high as I can cipher, 
edge but the rim of the farther systems. 



228 WALT WHITMAN 

Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always 

expanding, 
Outward, outward, and forever outward. 

My sun has his sun, and round him obediently 

wheels, 
He joins with his partners a group of superior 

circuit, 
And greater sets follow, making specks of the 

greatest inside them. 

There is no stoppage, and never can be stoppage, 

If I, you, the worlds, all beneath or upon their 
surfaces, and all the palpable life, were this 
moment reduced back to a pallid float, it 
would not avail in the long run, 

We should surely bring up again where we now 
stand, 

And as surely go as much farther — and then 
farther and farther. 

A few quadrillions of eras, a few octillions of 
cubic leagues, do not hazard the span, or 
make it impatient, 

They are but parts — anything is but a part. 



WALT WHITMAN 229 

See ever so far, there is limitless space outside 

of that, 
Count ever so much, there is limitless time 

around that. 

My rendezvous is appointed, 
The Lord will be there, and wait till I come on 
perfect terms. 

I know I have the best of time and space, and 
was never measured, and never will be 
measured. 



67 O Captain ! my Captain ! 1 

O Captain ! my Captain ! our fearful trip is 

done, 
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize 

we sought is won, 
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all 

exulting, 
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel 

grim and daring ; 

1 On the death of Abraham Lincoln. 



230 WALT WHITMAN 

But O heart ! heart ! heart ! 
O the bleeding drops of red, 

Where on the deck my Captain lies, 
Fallen cold and dead. 

O Captain ! my Captain ! rise up and hear the 

bells ; 
Rise up — for you the flag is flung — for you 

the bugle trills, 
For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths — for 

you the shores acrowding, 
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager 
faces turning ; 
Here Captain ! dear father ! 
This arm beneath your head ! 

It is some dream that on the deck 
You've fallen cold and dead. 

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale 

and still, 
My father does not feel my arm, he has no 

pulse nor will, 
The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage 

closed and done, 



WALT WHITMAN 23 1 

From fearful trip the victor ship conies in with 
object won ; 
Exult O shores, and ring O bells ! 
But I, with* mournful tread, 

Walk the deck my Captain lies, 
Fallen cold and dead. 



68 Give me the Splendid Silent Snn 

Give me the splendid silent sun with all his 
beams full-dazzling, 

Give me juicy autumnal fruit ripe and red from 
the orchard, 

Give me a field where the unmowed grass 
grows, 

Give me an arbor, give me the trellised grape, 

Give me fresh corn and wheat, give me serene- 
moving animals teaching content, 

Give me nights perfectly quiet as on high 
plateaus west of the Mississippi, and I look- 
ing up at the stars, 

Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beauti- 
ful flowers where I can walk undisturbed, 



232 WALT WHITMAN 

Give me for marriage a sweet-breathed woman 
of whom I should never tire, 

Give me a perfect child, give me, away aside 
from the noise of the world, a rural domes- 
tic life, 

Give me to warble spontaneous songs recluse by 
myself, for my own ears only, 

Give me solitude, give me Nature, give me again 
O Nature your primal sanities ! 

These demanding to have them, (tired with 

ceaseless excitement, and racked by the 

war-strife) 
These to procure incessantly asking, rising in 

cries from my heart, 
While yet incessantly asking still I adhere to 

my city, 
Day upon day and year upon year, O city, 

walking your streets, 
Where you hold me enchained a certain time 

refusing to give me up, 
Yet giving to make me glutted, enriched of soul, 

you give me forever faces ; 



WALT WHITMAN 233 

(O I see what I sought to escape, confronting, 

reversing my cries, 
I see my own soul trampling down what it 

asked for.) 

Keep your splendid silent sun, 

Keep your woods, O Nature, and the quiet 

places by the woods, 
Keep your fields of clover and timothy, and 

your corn-fields and orchards, 
Keep the blossoming .buckwheat fields where 

the Ninth-month bees hum ; 
Give me faces and streets — give me these 

phantoms incessant and endless along the 

trottoirs ! 
Give me interminable eyes — give me women — 

give me comrades and lovers by the 

thousand ! 

Let me see new ones every day — let me hold 
new ones by the hand every day ! 

Give me such shows — give me the streets of 
Manhattan ! 



234 WALT WHITMAN 

Give me Broadway, with the soldiers marching — 
give me the sound of the trumpets and 
drums ! 

(The soldiers in companies or regiments — some 
starting away flushed and reckless, 

Some, their time up, returning with thinned 
ranks, young, yet very old, worn, marching 
noticing nothing;) 

Give me the shores and wharves heavy-fringed 
with black ships ! 

O such for me ! O an intense life, full to 
repletion and varied ! 

The life of the theatre, bar-room, huge hotel for 
me ! 

The saloon of the steamer ! The crowded 
excursion for me! The torchlight proces- 
sion ! 

The dense brigade bound for the war, with high- 
piled military wagons following ; 

People, endless, streaming, with strong voices, 
passions, pageants, 

Manhattan streets with their powerful throbs, 
with beating drums as now, 



WALT WHITMAN 235 

The endless and noisy chorus, the rustle and 
clank of muskets (even the sight of the 
wounded), 

Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical 
chorus ! 

Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me. 



WILLIAM WETMORE STORY 

69 The Violet 

O faint, delicious, spring-time violet ! 

Thine odor, like a key, 
Turns noiselessly in memory's wards to let 

A thought of sorrow free. 

The breath of distant fields upon my brow 

Blows through that open door 
The sound of wind-borne bells, more sweet and 
low, 

And sadder than of yore. 

It comes afar, from that beloved place, 

And that beloved hour, 
When life hung ripening in love's golden grace, 

Like grapes above a bower. 

A spring goes singing through its reedy grass ; 
The lark sings o'er my head, 

236 



WILLIAM WETMORE STORY 237 

Drowned in the sky — O, pass, ye visions, pass ! 
I would that I were dead ! — 

Why hast thou opened that forbidden door 

From which I ever flee ? 
O vanished joy ! O love, that art no more, 

Let my vexed spirit be ! 

O violet ! thy odor through my brain 
Hath searched, and stung to grief 

This sunny day, as if a curse did stain 
Thy velvet leaf. 



AMELIA B. COPPUCK WELBY 

70 The Old Maid 

Why sits she thus in solitude ? Her heart 

Seems melting in her eyes' delicious blue ; 
And as it heaves, her ripe lips lie apart, 

As if to let its heavy throbbings through ; 
In her dark eye a depth of softness swells, 

Deeper than that her careless girlhood wore ; 
And her cheek crimsons with the hue that tells 

The rich, fair fruit is ripened to the core. 

It is her thirtieth birthday ! With a sigh 

Her soul hath turned from youth's luxuriant 
bowers, 
And her heart taken up the last sweet tie 

That measured out its links of golden hours ! 
She feels her inmost soul within her stir 

With thoughts too wild and passionate to 
speak ; 

238 



AMELIA B. COPPUCK WELBY 239 

Yet her full heart — its own interpreter — 
Translates itself in silence on her cheek. 

Joy's opening buds, affection's glowing flowers, 

Once lightly sprang within her beaming track ; 
O, life was beautiful in those lost hours, 

And yet she does not wish to wander back ! 
No ! she but loves in loneliness to think 

On pleasures past, though nevermore to be ; 
Hope links her to the future, — but the link 

That binds her to the past is memory. 



ALICE CARY 

71 Pictures of Memory 

Among the beautiful pictures 

That hang on Memory's wall 
Is one of a dim old forest, 

That seemeth best of all ; 
Not for its gnarled oaks olden, 

Dark with the mistletoe ; 
Not for the violets golden 

That sprinkle the vale below ; 
Not for the milk-white lilies 

That lean from the fragrant ledge, 
Coquetting all day with the sunbeams, 

And stealing their golden edge ; 
Not for the vines on the upland, 

Where the bright red berries rest, 
Nor the pinks, nor the pale sweet cowslip. 

It seemeth to me the best. 

I once had a little brother, 

With eyes that were dark and deep ; 
240 



ALICE CARY 24 1 

In the lap of that old dim forest 

He lieth in peace asleep : 
Light as the down of the thistle, 

Free as the winds that blow, 
We roved there the beautiful summers, 

The summers of long ago ; 
But his feet on the hills grew weary, 

And, one of the autumn eves, 
I made for my little brother 

A bed of the yellow leaves. 
Sweetly his pale arms folded 

My neck in a meek embrace, 
As the light of immortal beauty 

Silently covered his face ; 
And when the arrows of sunset 

Lodged in the tree-tops bright, 
He fell, in his saint-like beauty, 

Asleep by the gates of light. 
Therefore, of all the pictures 

That hang on Memory's wall, 
The one of the dim old forest 

Seemeth the best of all. 



PHOEBE CARY 

72 Nearer Home 

One sweetly solemn thought 
Comes to me o'er and o'er, — 

I am nearer home to-day 

Than I ever have been before ; — 

Nearer my Father's house 

Where the many mansions be ; 

Nearer the great white throne, 
Nearer the jasper sea; — 

Nearer the bound of life 

Where we lay our burdens down ; 
Nearer leaving the cross, 

Nearer gaining the crown. 

But lying darkly between, 

Winding down through the night, 

Is the dim and unknown stream 
That leads at last to the light. 
242 



PHGEBE CARY 243 

Closer and closer my steps 

Come to the dark abysm ; 
Closer Death to my lips 

Presses the awful chrysm. 

Father, perfect my trust ; 

Strengthen the might of my faith ; 
Let me feel as I would when I stand 

On the rock of the shore of Death, — 

Feel as I would when my feet 

Are slipping o'er the brink ; 
For it may be I'm nearer home, — 

Nearer now than I think. 



THOMAS BUCHANAN READ 

73 Drifting 

My soul to-day 

Is far away, 
Sailing the Vesuvian Bay ; 

My winged boat, 

A bird afloat, 
Swims round the purple peaks remote 

Round purple peaks 

It sails, and seeks 
Blue inlets and their crystal creeks, 

Where high rocks throw, 

Through deeps below, 
A duplicated golden glow. 

Far, vague, and dim 
The mountains swim ; 
While, on Vesuvius' misty brim, 
244 



THOMAS BUCHANAN READ 245 

With outstretched hands, 
The gray smoke stands 
O'erlooking the volcanic lands. 

Here Ischia smiles 

O'er liquid miles ; 
And yonder, bluest of the isles, 

Calm Capri waits, 

Her sapphire gates 
Beguiling to her bright estates. 

I heed not, if 

My rippling skiff 
Float swift or slow from cliff to cliff ; — 

With dreamful eyes 

My spirit lies 
Under the walls of Paradise. 

Under the walls 

Where swells and falls 
The Bay's deep breast at intervals, 

At peace I lie, 

Blown softly by, 
A cloud upon this liquid sky. 



246 THOMAS BUCHANAN READ 

The day, so mild, 

Is Heaven's own child, 
With Earth and Ocean reconciled ; — 

The airs I fee! 

Around me steal 
Are murmuring to the murmuring keel. 

Over the rail 

My hand I trail 
Within the shadow of the sail ; 

A joy intense, 

The cooling sense 
Glides down my drowsy indolence. 

With dreamful eyes 

My spirit lies 
Where Summer sings and never dies, — 

O'erveiled with vines, 

She glows and shines 
Among her future oil and wines. 

Her children, hid 
The cliffs amid, 
Are gambolling with the gambolling kid ; 



THOMAS BUCHANAN READ 247 

Or down the walls, 
With tipsy calls, 
Laugh on the rocks like waterfalls. 

The fisher's child, 

With tresses wild, 
Unto the smooth, bright sand beguiled, 

With glowing lips 

Sings as she skips, 
Or gazes at the far-off ships. 

Yon deep bark goes 

Where Traffic blows, 
From lands of sun to lands of snows ; — 

This happier one, 

Its course is run 
From lands of snow to lands of sun. 

O happy ship, 

To rise and dip, 
With the blue crystal at your lip ! 

O happy crew, 

My heart with you 
Sails, and sails, and sings anew 



248 THOMAS BUCHANAN READ 

No more, no more 

The worldly shore 
Upbraids me with its loud uproar ! 

With dreamful eyes 

My spirit lies 
Under the walls of Paradise ! 

In lofty lines, 

Mid palms and pines, 
And olives, aloes, elms, and vines, 

Sorrento swings 

On sunset wings, 
Where Tasso's spirit soars and sings. 



74 Sheridan's Ride 

Up from the South at break of day, 

Bringing to Winchester fresh dismay, 

The affrighted air with a shudder bore, 

Like a herald in haste, to the chieftain's door, 

The terrible grumble and rumble and roar, 

Telling the battle was on once more, 

And Sheridan twenty miles away. 



THOMAS BUCHANAN READ 249 

And wider still those billows of war 

Thundered along the horizon's bar ; 

•And louder yet into Winchester rolled 

The roar of that red sea uncontrolled, 

Making the blood of the listener cold 

As he thought of the stake in that fiery fray, 

With Sheridan twenty miles away. 

But there is a road from Winchester town, 

A good, broad highway, leading down ; 

And there, through the flash of the morning light 

A steed as black as the steeds of night 

Was seen to pass as with eagle flight. 

As if he knew the terrible need, 

He stretched away with the utmost speed ; 

Hills rose and fell, — but his heart was gay, 

With Sheridan fifteen miles away. 

Still sprung from those swift hoofs, thundering 

South, 
The dust, like smoke from the cannon's mouth ; 
Or the trail of a comet, sweeping faster and faster, 
Foreboding to traitors the doom of disaster. 
The heart of the steed and the heart of the master 



250 THOMAS BUCHANAN READ 

Were beating, like prisoners assaulting their 

walls, 
Impatient to be where the battle-field calls; 
Every nerve of the charger was strained to full 

play, 
With Sheridan only ten miles away. 

Under his spurning feet, the road 

Like an arrowy Alpine river flowed, 

And the landscape sped away behind, 

Like an ocean flying before the wind ; 

And the steed, like a bark fed with furnace ire, 

Swept on, with his wild eyes full of fire ; 

But, lo ! he is nearing his heart's desire, 

He is snuffing the smoke of the roaring fray, 

With Sheridan only five miles away. 

The first that the General saw were the groups 
Of stragglers, and then the retreating troops ; 
What was done, — what to do, — a glance told 

him both, 
And, striking his spurs with a terrible oath, 
He dashed down the line mid a storm of huzzas, 



THOMAS BUCHANAN READ 25 1 

And the wave of retreat checked its course there, 

because 
The sight of the master compelled it to pause. 
With foam and with dust the black charger was 

gray; 
By the flash of his eye, and his nostrils' play, 
He seemed to the whole great army to say, 
" I have brought you Sheridan all the way 
From Winchester down, to save the day ! " 

Hurrah, hurrah for Sheridan ! 

Hurrah, hurrah for horse and man ! 

And when their statues are placed on high, 

Under the dome of the Union sky, — 

The American soldier's Temple of Fame, — 

There with the glorious General's name 

Be it said in letters both bold and bright : 

" Here is the steed that saved the day 

By carrying Sheridan into the fight, 

From Winchester, — twenty miles away ! " 



GEORGE HENRY BOKER 

75 The Black Regiment 

[May 27, 1863.] 

Dark as the clouds of even, 
Ranked in the western heaven, 
Waiting the breath that lifts 
All the dead mass, and drifts 
Tempest and falling brand 
Over a ruined land, — 
So still and orderly, 
Arm to arm, knee to knee, 
Waiting the great event, 
Stands the black regiment. 

Down the long dusky line 
Teeth gleam and eyeballs shine ; 
And the bright bayonet, 
Bristling and firmly set, 
Flashed with a purpose grand, 
252 



GEORGE HENRY BOKER 253 

Long ere the sharp command 
Of the fierce rolling drum 
Told them their time had come, 
Told them what work was sent 
For the black regiment. 

" Now," the flag-sergeant cried, 
"Though death and hell betide, 
Let the whole nation see 
If we are fit to be 
Free in this land ; or bound 
Down, like the whining hound, — 
Bound with red stripes of pain 
In our cold chains again ! " 
O, what a shout there went 
From the black regiment ! 

" Charge ! " Trump and drum awoke ; 
Onward the bondmen broke ; 
Bayonet and sabre-stroke 
Vainly opposed their rush. 
Through the wild battle's crush, 
With but one thought aflush, 
Driving their lords like chaff, 



254 GEORGE HENRY BOKER 

In the guns' mouths they laugh ; 
Or at the slippery brands 
Leaping with open hands, 
Down they tear man and horse, 
Down in their awful course ; 
Trampling with bloody heel 
Over the crashing steel, — 
All their eyes forward bent, 
Rushed the black regiment. 

" Freedom ! " their battle-cry, — 
" Freedom ! or leave to die ! " 
Ah ! and they meant the word, 
Not as with us 'tis heard, 
Not a mere party shout ; 
They gave their spirits out, 
Trusted the end to God, 
And on the gory sod 
Rolled in triumphant blood. 
Glad to strike one free blow, 
Whether for weal or woe ; 
Glad to breathe one free breath, 
Though on the lips of death ; 



GEORGE HENRY BOKER 255 

Praying, — alas ! in vain ! — 
That they might fall again, 
So they could once more see 
That burst to liberty ! 
This was what " freedom " lent 
To the black regiment. 

Hundreds on hundreds fell ; 
But they are resting well ; 
Scourges and shackles strong 
Never shall do them wrong. 
O, to the living few, 
Soldiers, be just and true ! 
Hail them as comrades tried ; 
Fight with them side^by side; 
Never, in field or tent, 
Scorn the black regiment ! 



BAYARD TAYLOR 

76 Bedouin Love- Song 

From the Desert I come to thee, 

On a stallion shod with fire ; 
And the winds are left behind 

In the speed of my desire. 
Under thy window I stand, 

And the midnight hears my cry : 
I love thee, I love but thee ! 
With a love that shall not die 
Till the sun grows cold, 
And the stars are old, 
And the leaves of the Judgment 
Book unfold ! 

Look from thy window, and see 
My passion and my pain ! 

I lie on the sands below, 
And I faint in thy disdain. 
256 



BAYARD TAYLOR 257 

Let the night-winds touch thy brow 

With the heat of my burning sigh, 
And melt thee to hear the vow 
Of a love that shall not die 
Till the sun grows cold, 
And the stars are old, 
And the leaves of the Judgment 
Book unfold! 

My steps, are nightly driven, 
By the fever in my breast, 
To hear from thy lattice breathed 

The word that shall give me rest. 
Open the door of thy heart, 

And open thy chamber door, 
And my kisses shall teach thy lips 
The love that shall fade no more 
Till the sun grows cold 
And the stars are old, 
And the leaves of the Judgment 
Book unfold ! 



258 BAYARD TAYLOR 

J7 The Arab to the Palm 

Next to thee, O fair gazelle, 

O Beddowee girl, beloved so well ; 

Next to the fearless Nedjidee, 

Whose fleetness shall bear me again to thee 

Next to ye both, I love the palm, 

With his leaves of beauty, his fruit of balm ; 

Next to ye both, I love the tree 
Whose fluttering shadow wraps us three 
With love and silence and mystery ! 

Our tribe is many, our poets vie 

With any under the Arab sky ; 

Yet none can sing of the palm but I. 

The marble minarets that begem 

Cairo's citadel-diadem 

Are not so light as his slender stem. 

He lifts his leaves in the sunbeam's glance, 
As the Almehs lift their arms in dance, — 



BAYARD TAYLOR 259 

A slumberous motion, a passionate sign, 
That works in the cells of the blood like wine. 

Full of passion and sorrow is he, 
Dreaming where the beloved may be ; 

And when the warm south-winds arise, 
He breathes his longing in fervid sighs, 

Quickening odors, kisses of balm, 

That drop in the lap of his chosen palm. 

The sun may flame, and the sands may stir, 
But the breath of his passion reaches her. 

tree of love, by that love of thine, 
Teach me how I shall soften mine ! 

Give me the secret of the sun, 
Whereby the wooed is ever won ! 

[f I were a king, O stately tree, 

A likeness, glorious as might be, 

In the court of my palace I'd build for thee ; 



260 BAYARD TAYLOR 

With a shaft of silver, burnished bright, 
And leaves of beryl and malachite ; 

With spikes of golden bloom ablaze, 
And fruits of topaz and chrysoprase ; 

And there the poets, in thy praise, 
Should night and morning frame new lays. 

New measures, sung to tunes divine ; 
But none, O palm, should equal mine ! 



ETHELINDA ELLIOTT BEERS 

78 All Quiet along the Potomac 

" All quiet along the Potomac," they say, 

" Except now and then a stray picket 
Is shot, as he walks on his beat to and fro, 

By a rifleman hid in the thicket. 
'Tis nothing — a private or two now and then 

Will not count in the news of the battle ; 
Not an officer lost — only one of the men, 

Moaning out, all alone, the death-rattle." 

All quiet along the Potomac to-night, 

Where the soldiers lie peacefully dreaming ; 
Their tents in the rays of the clear autumn 
moon, 
Or the light of the watch-fire, are gleaming. 
A tremulous sigh of the gentle night-wind 
Through the forest leaves softly is creeping ; 

261 



262 ETHELINDA ELLIOTT BEERS 

While stars up above, with their glittering 
eyes, 
Keep guard, for the army is sleeping. 

There's only the sound of the lone sentry's 
tread, 

As he tramps from the rock to the fountain, 
And thinks of the two in the low trundle-bed 

Far away in the cot on the mountain. 
His musket falls slack; his face, dark and 
grim, 

Grows gentle with memories tender, 
As he mutters a prayer for the children asleep, 

For their mother ; may Heaven defend her ! 

The moon seems to shine just as brightly as 

then, 
That night, when the love yet unspoken 
Leaped up to his lips — when low-murmured 
vows 
Were pledged to be ever unbroken. 
Then drawing his sleeve roughly over his eyes. 
He dashes off tears that are welling, 



ETHELINDA ELLIOTT BEERS 263 

And gathers his gun closer up to its place, 
As if to keep down the heart-swelling. " 

He passes the fountain, the blasted pine-tree, 

The footstep is lagging and weary ; 
Yet onward he goes, through the broad belt of 
light, 
Toward the shade of the forest so dreary. 
Hark ! was it the night-wind that rustled the 
leaves ? 
Was it moonlight so wondrously flashing ? 
It looked like a rifle ... " Ha ! Mary, good- 
by!" 
The red life-blood is ebbing and plashing. 

All quiet along the Potomac to-night ; 

No sound save the rush of the river ; 
While soft falls the dew on the face of the 
dead — 

The picket's off duty forever ! 



WILLIAM HAINES LYTLE 

79 Antony to Cleopatra 

"I am dying, Egypt, dying." — SHAKESPEARE'S 

Antony and Cleopatra, Act iv. Sc. 13. 

I am dying, Egypt, dying, 

Ebbs the crimson life-tide fast, 
And the dark Plutonian shadows 

Gather on the evening blast ; 
Let thine arms, O Queen, enfold me, 

Hush thy sobs and bow thine ear ; 
Listen to the great heart-secrets, 

Thou, and thou alone,, must hear. 

Though my scarred and veteran legions 
Bear their eagles high no more, 

And my wrecked and scattered galleys 
Strew dark Actium's fatal shore, 

Though no glittering guards surround me, 
Prompt to do their master's will, 
264 



WILLIAM HAINES LYTLE 265 

I must perish like a Roman, 
Die the great Triumvir still. 

Let not Caesar's servile minions 

Mock the lion thus laid low ; 
'Twas no foeman's arm that felled him, 

'Twas his own that struck the blow : 
His who, pillowed on thy bosom, 

Turned aside from glory's ray, 
His who, drunk with thy caresses, 

Madly threw a world away. 

Should the base plebeian rabble 

Dare assail my name at Rome, 
Where my noble spouse, Octavia, 

Weeps within her widowed home, 
Seek her ; say the gods bear witness — 

Altars, augurs, circling wings — 
That her blood, with mine commingled, 

Yet shall mount the throne of kings 

As for thee, star-eyed Egyptian ! 
Glorious sorceress of the Nile ! 



266 WILLIAM HAINES LYTLE 

Light the path to Stygian horrors 
With the splendors of thy smile. 

Give the Caesar crowns and arches, 
Let his brow the laurel twine ; 

I can scorn the Senate's triumphs, 
Triumphing in love like thine. 

I am dying, Egypt, dying ! 

Hark! the insulting foeman's cry. 
They are coming — quick, my falchion ! 

Let me front them ere I die. 
Ah ! no more amid the battle 

Shall my heart exulting swell ; 
Isis and Osiris guard thee ! 

Cleopatra — Rome — farewell ! 



ROSE TERRY COOKE 

80 Rive du Midi 

When o'er the mountain steeps 
The hazy noontide creeps, 
And the shrill cricket sleeps 

Under the grass ; 
When soft the shadows lie, 
And clouds sail o'er the sky, 
And the idle winds go by, 
With the heavy scent of blossoms as they 
pass, — 

Then, when the silent stream 

Lapses as in a dream, 

And the water-lilies gleam 

Up to the sun ; 

When the hot and burdened day 

Rests on its downward way, 

When the moth forgets to play, 

And the plodding ant may dream her work is 

done, — 

267 



268 ROSE TERRY COOKE 

Then, from the noise of war 
And the din of earth afar, 
Like some forgotten star 

Dropt from the sky, — 
The sounds of love and fear, 
All voices sad and clear, 
Banished to silence drear, — 
The willing thrall of trances sweet I lie. 

Some melancholy gale 
Breathes its mysterious tale, 
Till the rose's lips grow pale 

With her sighs ; 
And o'er my thoughts are cast 
Tints of the vanished past, 
Glories that faded fast, 
Renewed to splendor in my dreaming eyes. 

As poised on vibrant wings, 
Where its sweet treasure swings, 
The honey-lover clings 

To the red flowers, — 



ROSE TERRY COOKE 269 

So, lost in vivid light, 
So, rapt from day and night, 
I linger in delight, 
Enraptured o'er the vision-freighted hours. 



RICHARD HENRY STODDARD 

8 1 It Never Comes Again 

There are gains for all our losses, 
There are balms for all our pain, 
But when youth, the dream, departs, 
It takes something from our hearts, 
And it never comes again. 

We are stronger, and are better, 

Under manhood's sterner reign ; 
Still we feel that something sweet 
Followed youth, with flying feet, 
And will never come again. 

Something beautiful is vanished, 

And we sigh for it in vain ; 
We behold it everywhere, 
On the earth, and in the air, 
But it never comes again. 
270 



RICHARD HENRY STODDARD 271 

82 The Sea 

Through the night, through the night, 

In the saddest unrest, 
Wrapt in white, all in white, 

With her babe on her breast, 
Walks the mother so pale, 
Staring out on the gale, 

Through the night. 

Through the night, through the night 
Where the sea lifts the wreck, 

Land in sight, close in sight, 
On the surf-flooded deck, 

Stands the father so brave, 

Driving on to his grave, 
Through the night. 



COATES KINNEY 

83 Rain on the Roof 

When the humid shadows hover 

Over all the starry spheres, 
And the melancholy darkness 

Gently weeps in rainy tears, 
What a bliss to press the pillow 

Of a cottage-chamber bed, 
And to listen to the patter 

Of the soft rain overhead ! 

Every tinkle on the shingles 

Has an echo in the heart ; 
And a thousand dreamy fancies 

Into busy being start, 
And a thousand recollections 

Weave their air-threads into woof, 
As I listen to the patter 

Of the rain upon the roof. 
272 



COATES KINNEY 273 

Now in memory comes my mother, 

As she used, in years agone, 
To regard the darling dreamers 

Ere she left them till the dawn : 

! I see her leaning o'er me, 
As I list to this refrain 

Which is played upon the shingles 
By the patter of the rain. 

Then my little seraph sister, 

With the wings and waving hair, 
And her star-eyed cherub brother — 

A serene angelic pair ! — 
Glide around my wakeful pillow, 

With their praise or mild reproof, 
As I listen to the murmur 

Of the soft rain on the roof. 

And another comes, to thrill me 
With her eyes' delicious blue ; 

And I mind not, musing on her, 
That her heart was all untrue : 

1 remember but to love her 
With a passion kin to pain, 



274 COATES KINNEY 

And my heart's quick pulses vibrate 
To the patter of the rain. 

Art hath naught of tone or cadence 

That can work with such a spell 
In the soul's mysterious fountains, 

Whence the tears of rapture well, 
As that melody of nature, * 

That subdued, subduing strain 
Which is played upon the shingles 

By the patter of the rain. 



HENRY TIMROD 

?4 Dreams 

Who first said "False as dreams"? Not one 
who saw 

Into the wild and wondrous world they sway ; 
No thinker who hath read their mystic law ; 

No poet who hath weaved them in his lay. 

Else had he known that through the human 
breast 
Cross and recross a thousand fleeting gleams, 
rhat, passed unnoticed in the day's unrest, 
Come out at night, like stars, in shining 
dreams ; 

That minds too busy or too dull to mark 

The dim suggestion of the noisier hours, 
By dreams in the deep silence of the dark 
Are roused at midnight with their folded 
powers. 

275 



276 HENRY TIMROD 

Like that old fount beneath Dodona's oaks, 
That, dry and voiceless in the garish noon, 

When the calm night arose with modest looks, 
Caught with full wave the sparkle of the moon. 

If, now and then, a ghastly shape glide in, 
And fright us with its horrid gloom or glee, 

It is the ghost of some forgotten sin 
We failed to exorcise on bended knee. 

And that sweet face which only yesternight 
Came to thy solace, dreamer (didst thou read 

The blessing in its eyes of tearful light ?), 
Was but the spirit of some gentle deed. 

Each has its lesson ; for our dreams in sooth, 
Come they in shape of demons, gods, or elves, 

Are allegories with deep hearts of truth 
That tell us solemn secrets of ourselves. 



1 i_ 



GUY HUMPHREY McMASTER 

85 Carmen Bellicosum 

In their ragged regimentals 
Stood the old Continentals, 

Yielding not, 
When the grenadiers were lunging, 
And like hail fell the plunging 
Cannon-shot ; 
When the files 
Of the isles, 
From the smoky night encampment, bore the 
banner of the rampant 
Unicorn, 
And grummer, grummer, grummer rolled the roll 
of the drummer, 

Through the morn ! 

Then with eyes to the front all, 
And with guns horizontal, 
Stood our sires ; 
277 



278 GUY HUMPHREY McMASTER 

And the balls whistled deadly, 
And in streams flashing redly- 
Blazed the fires ; 
As the roar 
On the shore, 
Swept the strong battle-breakers o'er the green- 
sodded acres 

Of the plain ; 
And louder, louder, louder, cracked the black 
gunpowder, 

Cracking amain ! 

» 

Now like smiths at their forges 

Worked the red St. George's 

Cannoneers ; 
And the "villanous saltpetre" 
Rung a fierce, discordant metre 

Round their ears ; 

As the swift 

Storm-drift, 
With hot sweeping anger, came the horseguards' 
clangor, 

On our flanks ; 



GUY HUMPHREY McMASTER 279 

Then higher, higher, higher, burned the old- 
fashioned fire > 
Through the ranks ! 

Then the bare-headed colonel 
Galloped through the white infernal 

Powder-cloud ; 
And his broadsword was swinging, 
And his brazen throat was ringing 
Trumpet-loud. 
Then the blue 
Bullets flew, 
And the trooper-jackets redden at the touch of 
the leaden 

Rifle-breath; 
And rounder, rounder, rounder, roared the iron 
six-pounder, 

Hurling death ! 



PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE 

86 Preexistence 

While sauntering through the crowded street, 
Some half-remembered face I meet, 

Albeit upon no mortal shore 

That face, methinks, has smiled before. 

Lost in a gay and festal throng, 
I tremble at some tender song, — 

Set to an air whose golden bars 
I must have heard in other stars. 

In sacred aisles I pause to share 
The blessings of a priestly prayer, — 

When the whole scene which greets mine eyes 
In some strange mode I recognize 

As one whose every mystic part 
I feel prefigured in my heart. 

280 



PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE 28 1 

At sunset, as I calmly stand, 
A stranger on an alien strand, 

Familiar as my childhood's home 

Seems the long stretch of wave and foam. 

One sails toward me o'er the bay, 
And what he comes to do and say 

I can foretell. A prescient lore 
Springs from some life outlived of yore. 

O swift, instinctive, startling gleams 
Of deep soul-knowledge ! not as dreams 

For aye ye vaguely dawn and die, 
But oft with lightning certainty 

Pierce through the dark, oblivious brain, 
To make old thoughts and memories plain, 

Thoughts which perchance must travel back 
Across the wild, bewildering track 

Of countless aeons ; memories far, 
High-reaching as yon pallid star, 

Unknown, scarce seen, whose flickering grace 
Faints on the outmost rings of space ! 



282 PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE 

87 In Harbor 

I think it is over, over, 

I think it is over at last : 
Voices of foemen and lover, 
The sweet and the bitter have passed : 
Life, like a tempest of ocean, 
Hath outblown its ultimate blast: 
There's but a faint sobbing seaward, 
While the calm of the tide deepens leeward, 
And behold ! like the welcoming quiver 
Of heart-pulses throbbed through the river, 

Those lights in the harbor at last, 

The heavenly harbor at last ! 

I feel it is over ! over ! 

For the winds and the waters surcease ; 
Ah, few were the days of the rover 

That smiled in the beauty of peace, 
And distant and dim was the omen 
That hinted redress or release ! 
From the ravage of life, and its riot, 
What marvel I yearn for the quiet 

Which bides in the harbor at last, — 



PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE 283 

For the lights, with their welcoming quiver 
That throbs through the sanctified river, 

Which girdle the harbor at last, 

This heavenly harbor at last ? 

I know it is over, over, 

I know it is over at last ! 
Down sail! the sheathed anchor uncover, 
For the stress of the voyage has passed : 
Life, like a tempest of ocean, 

Hath outbreathed its ultimate blast : 
There's but a faint sobbing seaward, 
While the calm of the tide deepens leeward ; 
And behold ! like the welcoming quiver 
Of heart-pulses throbbed through the river, 

Those lights in the harbor at last, 

The heavenly harbor at last ! 



EMILY DICKINSON 

88 / Never Saw a Moor 

I never saw a moor, 

I never saw the sea ; 

Yet know I how the heather looks, 

And what a wave must be. 

I never spoke with God, 
Nor visited in heaven ; 
Yet certain am I of the spot 
As if the chart were given. 

89 Indian Summer 

These are the days when birds come back, 
A very few, a bird or two, 
To take a backward look. 

These are the days when skies put on 
The old, old sophistries of June, — 
A blue and gold mistake. 
284 



EMILY DICKINSON 285 

Oh, fraud that cannot cheat the bee, 
Almost thy plausibility 
Induces my belief, 

Till ranks of seeds their witness bear, 
And softly through the altered air 
Hurries a timid leaf ! 

Oh, sacrament of summer days, 
Oh, last communion in the haze, 
Permit a child to join, 

Thy sacred emblems to partake, 
Thy consecrated bread to break, 
Taste thine immortal wine ! 



HELEN HUNT JACKSON 

90 Habeas Corpus 

My body, eh ? Friend Death, how now ? 

Why all this tedious pomp of writ ? 
Thou hast reclaimed it sure and slow 

For half a century, bit by bit. 

In faith thou knowest more to-day 
Than I do, where it can be found ! 

This shrivelled lump of suffering clay, 
To which I now am chained and bound, 

Has not of kith or kin a trace 
To the good body once I bore ; 

Look at this shrunken, ghastly face : 
Didst ever see that face before ? 

Ah, well, friend Death, good friend thou art ; 

Thy only fault thy lagging gait, 
Mistaken pity in thy heart 

For timorous ones that bid thee wait. 
286 



HELEN HUNT JACKSON 287 

Do quickly all thou hast to do, 

Nor I nor mine will hindrance make ; 

I shall be free when thou art through ; 

I grudge thee naught that thou must take ! 

Stay ! I have lied : I grudge thee one, 
Yes, two I grudge thee at this last, — 

Two members which have faithful done 
My will and bidding in the past. 

I grudge thee this right hand of mine ; 

I grudge thee this quick-beating heart ; 
They never gave me coward sign, 

Nor played me once a traitor's part. 

I see now why in olden days 

Men in barbaric love or hate 
Nailed enemies' hands at wild.crossways, 

Shrined leaders' hearts in costly state : 

The symbol, sign, and instrument 

Of each soul's purpose, passion, strife, 

Of fires in which are poured and spent 
Their all of love, their all of life. 



288 HELEN HUNT JACKSON 

O feeble, mighty human hand ! 

fragile, dauntless human heart ! 
The universe holds nothing planned 

With such sublime, transcendent art ! 

Yes, Death, I own I grudge thee mine 

Poor little hand, so feeble now ; 
Its wrinkled palm, its altered line, 

Its veins so pallid and so slow — 

{Unfinished here.] 

Ah, well, friend Death, good friend thou art ; 

1 shall be free when thou art through. 
Take all there is — take hand and heart: 

There must be somewhere work to do. 

Her last poem: August 7, 1885. 



MARY WOOLSEY HOWLAND 
Rest 

I lay me down to sleep, 

With little care 
Whether my waking find 

Me here, or there. 

A bowing, burdened head 
That only asks to rest, 

Unquestioning, upon 
A loving breast. 

My good right hand forgets 

Its cunning now ; 
To march the weary march 

I know not how. 

I am not eager, bold, 

Nor strong, — all that is past ; 
289 



290 MARY W00LSEY HOWLAND 

I am ready not to do, 
At last, at last. 

My half-day's work is done, 
And this is all my part, — 

I give a patient God 
My patient heart ; 

And grasp his banner still, 
Though all the blue be dim ; 

These stripes as well as stars 
Lead after him. 



JOHN JAMES INGALLS 

92 Opportunity 

" Master of human destinies am I ! 
Fame, love, and fortune on my footsteps wait. 
Cities and fields I walk ; I penetrate 
Deserts and seas remote, and passing by 
Hovel and mart and palace — soon or late 
I knock unbidden once at every gate ! 

" If sleeping, wake — if feasting, rise before 

I turn away. It is the hour of fate, 

And they who follow me reach every state 

Mortals desire, and conquer every foe 

Save death ; but those who doubt or hesitate.. 

Condemned to failure, penury, and woe, 

Seek me in vain and uselessly implore. 

I answer not, and I return no more ! " 



291 



GEORGE ARNOLD 

93 September 

Sweet is the voice that calls 

From babbling waterfalls 
In meadows where the downy seeds are flying; 

And soft the breezes blow, 

And eddying come and go 
In faded gardens where the rose is dying. 

Among the stubbled corn 

The blithe quail pipes at morn, 
The merry partridge drums in hidden places, 

And glittering insects gleam 

Above the reedy stream, 
Where busy spiders spin their filmy laces. 

At eve, cool shadows fall 
Across the garden wall, 
And on the clustered grapes to purple turning ; 

292 



GEORGE ARNOLD 293 

And pearly vapors lie 
Along the eastern sky, 
Where the broad harvest-moon is redly burning. 

Ah, soon on field and hill 
The wind shall whistle chill, 

And patriarch swallows call their flocks together, 
To fly from frost and snow, 
And seek for lands where blow 

The fairer blossoms of a balmier weather. 

The cricket chirps all day, 
" O fairest summer, stay ! " 
The squirrel eyes askance the chestnuts brown- 
ing; 

The wild fowl fly afar 
Above the foamy bar, 
And hasten southward ere the skies are frown- 
ing. 

Now comes a fragrant breeze 
Through the dark cedar-trees, 
And round about my temples fondly lingers, 



294 GEORGE ARNOLD 

In gentle playfulness, 
Like to the soft caress. 
Bestowed in happier days by loving fingers. 

Yet, though a sense of grief 

Comes with the falling leaf, 
And memory makes the summer doubly pleasant, 

In all my autumn dreams 

A future summer gleams, 
Passing the fairest glories of the present ! 



HENRY AMES BLOOD 

94 The Song of the Savoyards 

Far poured past Broadway's lamps alight 
The tumult of her motley throng, 

When high and clear upon the night 
Rose an inspiring song, 

And rang above the city's din 

To sound of harp and violin ; 
A simple but a manly strain, 
And ending with the brave refrain — 

Courage ! Courage, mon camarade ! 

And now, where rose that song of cheer, 
Both young and old stood still for joy; 

Or from the windows hung to hear 
The children of Savoy : 

And many an eye with rapture glowed, 

And saddest hearts forgot their load, 
And feeble souls grew strong again, 
So stirring was the brave refrain — 

Courage ! Courage, mon camarade ! 

295 



296 HENRY AMES BLOOD 

Alone, with only silence there, 
Awaiting his life's welcome close, 

A sick man lay, when on the air 
That clarion arose ; 

So sweet the thrilling cadence rang, 

It seemed to him an angel sang, 

And sang to him ; and he would fain 
Have died upon that heavenly strain — 

Courage ! Courage, mon camarade ! 

A sorrow-stricken man and wife, 
With nothing left them but to pray, 

Heard streaming over their sad life 
That grand, heroic lay : 

And through the mist of happy tears 

They saw the promise-laden years ; 
And in their joy they sang again 
And carolled high the fond refrain — 

Courage ! Courage, moil camarade ! 

Two artists, in the cloud of gloom 

Which hung upon their hopes deferred, 

Resounding through their garret-room 
That noble chanson heard ; 



HENRY AMES BLOOD 297 

And, as the night before the day, 
Their weak misgivings fled away ; 
And with the burden of the strain 
They made their studio ring again — 
Courage ! Courage, mon camarade ! 



Two poets who in patience wrought 

The glory of an aftertime, — 
Lords of an age which knew them not, 

Heard rise that lofty rhyme ; 
And on their hearts it fell, as falls 
The sunshine upon prison walls ; 

And one caught up the magic strain 

And to the other sang again — 
Courage ! Courage, mon camarade ! 

And unto one, who, tired of breath 

And day and night and name and fame, 

Held to his lips a glass of death, 
That song a saviour came ; 

Beseeching him from his despair, 

As with the passion of a prayer ; 



298 HENRY AMES BLOOD 

And kindling in his heart and brain 
The valor of its blest refrain — 
Courage ! Courage, mon camarade ! 

O thou, with earthly ills beset, 

Call to thy lips those words of joy, 

And never in thy life forget 
The brave song of Savoy ! 

For those dear words may have the power 

To cheer thee in thy darkest hour ; 
The memory of that loved refrain 
Bring gladness to thy heart again ! — 

Courage ! Courage, mon camarade ! 



ABRAM JOSEPH RYAN 
95 Sentinel Songs 1 

When falls the soldier brave 
Dead — at the feet of wrong, — 

The poet sings, and guards his grave 
With sentinels of song. 

Songs, march ! he gives command, 

Keep faithful watch and true ; 
The living and dead of the Conquered Land 

Have now no guards save you. 

Grave Ballads ! mark ye well ! 

Thrice holy is your trust ! 
Go ! halt ! by the fields where warriors fell, 

Rest arms ! and guard their dust. 

List, Songs ! your watch is long ! 
The soldiers' guard was brief, 

1 Selected from "Father Ryan's Poems," published by P. J. 
Kenedy, New York. Copyrighted. 

299 



300 ABRAM JOSEPH RYAN 

Whilst right is right, and wrong is wrong, 
Ye may not seek relief. 

Go ! wearing the gray of grief ! 

Go ! watch o'er the Dead in Gray ! 
Go guard the private and guard the chief, 

And sentinel their clay ! 

And the songs, in stately rhyme, 

And with softly sounding tread, 
Go forth, to watch for a time — a time, 

Where sleep the Deathless Dead. 

And the songs, like funeral dirge, 

In music soft and low, 
Sing round the graves, — whilst hot tears surge 

From hearts that are homes of woe. 

What though no sculptured shaft 

Immortalize each brave? 
What though no monument epitaphed 

Be built above each grave ? 

When marble wears away, 
And monuments are dust, — 



ABRAM JOSEPH RYAN 301 

The songs that guard our soldiers' clay 
Will still fulfil their trust. 

With lifted head, and steady tread, 
Like stars that guard the skies, 

Go watch each bed, where rest the dead, 
Brave Songs ! with sleepless eyes. 



SIDNEY LANIER 

96 Song of the Chattahoochee 

Out of the hills of Habersham, 

Down the valleys of Hall, 
I hurry amain to reach the plain, 
Run the rapid and leap the fall, 
Split at the rock and together again, 
Accept my bed, or narrow or wide, 
And flee from folly on every side 
With a lover's pain to attain the plain 

Far from the hills of Habersham, 

Far from the valleys of Hall. 

All down the hills of Habersham, 
All through the valleys of Hall, 
The rushes cried Abide, abide, 
The wilful waterweeds held me thrall, 
The loving laurel turned my tide, 
The ferns and the fondling grass said Stay, 
302 



SIDNEY LANIER 303 

The dewberry dipped for to work delay, 
And the little reeds sighed Abide, abide, 

Here in the hills of Habersham, 

Here in the valleys of Hall. 

High o'er the hills of Habersham, 

Veiling the valleys of Hall, 
The hickory told me manifold 
Fair tales of shade ; the poplar tall 
Wrought me her shadowy self to hold ; 
The chestnut, the oak, the walnut, the pine, 
Overleaning, with flickering meaning and sign, 
Said, Pass not, so cold, these manifold 

Deep shades of the hills of Habersham, 

These glades in the valleys of Hall. 

And oft in the hills of Habersham, 

And oft in the valleys of Hall, 
The white quartz shone, and the smooth brook- 
stone 
Did bar me of passage with friendly brawl ; 
And many a luminous jewel alone 
— Crystal clear or a-cloud with mist, 



304 SIDNEY LANIER 

Ruby, or garnet, or amethyst — 

Made lures with the lights of streaming stone 
In the clefts of the hills of Habersham, 
In the beds of the valleys of Hall. 

But oh ! not the hills of Habersham, 

And oh ! not the valleys of Hall 
Avail ; I am fain for to water the plain. 
Downward the voices of Duty call ; 
Downward to toil and be mixed with the main, 
The dry fields burn, and the mills are to turn, 
And a myriad flowers mortally yearn, 
And the lordly main from beyond the plain 

Calls o'er the hills of Habersham, 

Calls through the valleys of Hall. 

97 A Ballad of Trees and the Master 

Into the woods my Master went, 

Clean forspent, forspent. 

Into the woods my Master came, 

Forspent with love and shame. 

But the olives they were not blind to Him ; 

The little gray leaves were kind to Him ; 



SIDNEY LANIER 305 

The thorn-tree had a mind to Him 
When into the woods he came. 

Out of the woods my Master went, 

And He was well content. 

Out of the woods my Master came, 

Content with death and shame. 

When Death and Shame would woo Him last, 

From under the trees they drew Him last : 

'Twas on a tree they slew Him — last, 

When out of the woods He came. 



JOHN HENRY BONER 

98 Poes Cottage at Fordham 

Here lived the soul enchanted 

By melody of song ; 
Here dwelt the spirit haunted 

By a demoniac throng ; 
Here sang the lips elated ; 
Here grief and death were sated ; 
Here loved and here unmated 

Was he, so frail, so strong. 

Here wintry winds and cheerless 

The dying firelight blew, 
While he whose song was peerless 

Dreamed the drear midnight through, 
And from dull embers chilling 
Crept shadows darkly filling 
The silent place, and thrilling 

His fancy as they grew. 
306 



JOHN HENRY BONER 307 

Here, with brow bared to heaven, 

In starry night he stood, 
With the lost star of seven 

Feeling sad brotherhood. 
Here in the sobbing showers 
Of dark autumnal hours 
He heard suspected powers 

Shriek through the stormy wood. 

From visions of Appllo 

And of Astarte's bliss, 
He gazed into the hollow 

And hopeless vale of Dis ; 
And though earth were surrounded 
By heaven, it still was mounded 
With graves. His soul had sounded 

The dolorous abyss. 



Proud, mad, but not defiant, 
He touched at heaven and hell, 

Fate found a rare soul pliant 
And rung her changes well. 



308 JOHN HENRY BONER 

Alternately his lyre, 
Stranded with strings of fire, 
Led earth's most happy choir, 
Or flashed with Israfel. 

No singer of old story 

Luting accustomed lays, 
No harper for new glory, 

No mendicant for praise, 
He struck high chords and splendid, 
Wherein were fiercely blended 
Tones that unfinished ended 
With his unfinished days. 

Here through this lowly portal, 
Made sacred by his name, • 
Unheralded immortal 

The mortal went and came. 
And fate that then denied him, 
And envy that decried him, 
And malice that belied him, 
Have cenotaphed his fame. 



CAROLINE SPENCER 

99 Living Waters 

There are some hearts like wells, green-mossed 
and deep 

As ever summer saw ; 
And cool their water is, — yea, cool and sweet; — 

But you must come to draw. 
They hoard not, yet they rest in calm content, 

And not unsought will give ; 
They can be quiet with their wealth unspent, 

So self-contained they live. 

And there are some like springs, that bubbling 
burst 
To follow dusty ways, 
And run with offered cup to quench his thirst 

Where the tired traveller strays ; 
That never ask the meadows if they want 
What is their joy to give ; 

309 



310 CAROLINE SPENCER 

Unasked, their lives to other life they grant, 
So self-bestowed they live ! 

And One is like the ocean, deep and wide, 

Wherein all waters fall ; 
That girdles the broad earth, and draws the 
tide, 

Feeding and bearing all; 
That breathes the mists, that sends the clouds 
abroad, 

That takes, again to give ; — 
Even the great and loving heart of God, 

Whereby all love doth live. 



RICHARD HOVEY 

IOO The Fatin 

A FRAGMENT 

I will go out to grass with that old King, 
For I am weary of clothes and cooks. 
I long to lie along the banks of brooks, 
And watch the boughs above me sway and 

swing. 
Come, I will pluck off custom's livery, 
Nor longer be a lackey to old Time, 
Time shall serve me, and at my feet shall fling 
The spoil of listless minutes. I shall climb 
The wild trees for my food, and run 
Through dale and upland as the fox runs free, 
Laugh for cool joy and sleep i' the warm sun, 
And men will call me mad, like that old King. 

For I am woodland-natured, and have made 
Dryads my bedfellows, 
And I have played 

3" 



312 RICHARD HOVEY 

With the sleek Naiads in the splash of the pools 
And made me mock of gowned and trousered 

fools. 
Helen, none knows 

Better than thou how like a Faun I strayed. 
And I am half Faun now, and my heart goes 
Out to the forest and the crack of twigs, 
The drip of wet leaves and the low soft laughter 
Of brooks that chuckle o'er old mossy jests 
And say them over to themselves, the nests 
Of squirrels and the holes the chipmunk digs, 
Where through the branches the slant rays 
Dapple with sunlight the leaf-matted ground, 
And the wind comes with blown vestures 

rustling after, 
And through the woven lattice of crisp sound 
A bird's song lightens like a maiden's face. 

O wildwood Helen, let them strive and fret, 
Those goggled men with their dissecting-knives ! 
Let them in charnel-houses pass their lives 
And seek in death life's secret ! And let 
Those hard-faced worldlings prematurely old 
Gnaw their thin lips with vain desire to get 



RICHARD HOVEY 313 

Portia's fair fame or Lesbia's carcanet, 

Or crown of Caesar or Catullus, 

Apicius' lampreys or Crassus' gold ! 

For these consider many things — but yet 

By land or sea 

They shall not find the way to Arcady, 

The old home of the awful heart-dear Mother, 

Whereto child-dreams and long rememberings 

lull 
Far from the cares that overlay and smother 
The memories of old woodland out-door mirth 
In the dim first life-burst centuries ago, 
The sense of the freedom and nearness of 

Earth — 
Nay, this they shall not know ; 
For who goes thither 

Leaves all the cark and clutch of his soul behind, 
The doves defiled and the serpents shrined, 
The hates that wax and the hopes that wither; 
Nor does he journey, seeking where it be, 
But wakes and finds himself in Arcady. 
Hist ! there's a stir in the brush. 
Was it a face through the leaves ? 



314 RICHARD HOVEY 

Back of the laurels a skurry and rush 

Hillward, then silence except for the thrush 

That throws one song from the dark of the 
bush 

And is gone ; and I plunge in the wood, and 
the swift soul cleaves 

Through the swirl and the flow of the leaves, 

As a swimmer stands with his white limbs bare 
to the sun 

For the space that a breath is held, and drops in 
the sea ; 

And the undulant woodland folds round me, in- 
timate, fluctuant, free, 

Like the clasp and the cling of the waters, and 
the reach and the effort is done, — 

There is only the glory of living, exultant to be. 

O goodly damp smell of the ground ! 

O rough sweet bark of the trees ! 

O clear sharp cracklings of sound ! 

O life that's a-thrill and a-bound 

With the vigor of boyhood and morning, and 

the noontide's rapture of ease ! 
Was there ever a weary heart in the world ? 



RICHARD HOVEY 315 

A lag in the body's urge or a flag of the spirit's 

wings ? 
Did a man's heart ever break 
For a lost hope's sake ? 
For here there is lilt in the quiet and calm in 

the quiver of things. 
Ay, this old oak, gray-grown and knurled, 
Solemn and sturdy and big, 
Is as young of heart, as alert and elate in his 

rest, 
As the nuthatch there that clings to the tip of 

the twig 
And scolds at the wind that buffets too rudely 

its nest. 

Oh, what is it breathes in the air ? 

Oh, what is it touches my cheek ? 

There's a sense of a presence that lurks in the 

branches. 
But where ? 
Is it far, is it far to seek ? 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES 

PAGE 

A child said, What is the grass ? 223 

All grim and soiled and brown with tan 147 

" All quiet along the Potomac," they say 261 

Among the beautiful pictures 240 

As a twig trembles, which a bird 221 

At midnight, in his guarded tent 34 

Ay, tear her tattered ensign down ! 159 

Blessings on thee, little man 136 

Bravely thy old arms fling 176 

Burly dozing humblebee ! 105 

Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise 3 

Dark as the clouds of even 252 

Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way . . . 201 

Deep in the wave is a coral grove 42 

Fair flower, that dost so comely grow I 

Far poured past Broadway's lamps alight 295 

From gold to gray 152 

From the Desert I come to thee 256 

Gay, guiltless pair 40 

Give me the splendid silent sun 231 

God sends his teachers unto every age 204 

3*7 



318 INDEX OF FIRST LINES 

PAGE 

Good-by, proud world, I'm going home 115 

Green be the turf above thee 33 

Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay . . . . 160 

Hear the sledges with the bells — 90 

Here lived the soul enchanted 306 

His echoing axe the settler swung 168 

How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood . 14 

I am dying, Egypt, dying 264 

I fill this cup to one made up 57 

I heard the trailing garments of the Night 120 

I lay me down to sleep 289 

I like a church, I like a cowl in 

I love to wander through the woodlands hoary .... 66 

I never saw a moor 284 

In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes .... 108 

In their ragged regimentals 277 

Into the woods my Master went 304 

I think it is over, over 282 

I will go out to grass with that old King 311 

Let me move slowly through the street 48 

Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown . . . 109 

Master of human destinies am I ! 291 

My body, eh ? Friend Death, how now ? 286 

My soul to-day 244 

New England's dead ! New England's dead ! . . . . 117 

Next to thee, O fair gazelle 258 

No more these simple flowers belong 141 

Not in the sky 80 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES 319 

PAGE 

O Captain ! my Captain ! 229 

O'er a low couch the setting sun had thrown its latest ray 62 

O faint, delicious, spring-time violet ! 236 

Once upon a midnight dreary 95 

One sweetly solemn thought 242 

One year ago, — a ringing voice 183 

O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light 7 

Out of the hills of Habersham 302 

Pause not to dream of the future before us 172 

Sleep, love, sleep ! 191 

Sparkling and bright in liquid light 83 

Summer has gone 186 

Sweet is the voice that calls 292 

Thank Heaven ! the crisis — 85 

The day is done, and the darkness 132 

The melancholy days are corne, the saddest of the year . 50 

The Pilgrim Fathers — where are they ? 17 

The shadows lay along Broadway 78 

The thoughts are strange that crowd into my brain . . 23 

There are gains for all our losses 270 

There are some hearts like wells, green-mossed and deep 309 

There is no flock, however watched and tended .... 127 

There stood an unsold captive in the mart 69 

These are the days when birds come back 284 

This is the arsenal. From floor to ceiling 121 

This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign 157 

Thou blossom bright with autumn dew 55 

Thou little bird, thou dweller by the sea 20 

Through the night, through the night 271 

HTis the middle watch of a summer's night 28 



320 INDEX OF FIRST LINES 

PAGE 

To him who in the love of Nature holds 44 

To weary hearts, to mourning homes 135 

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the 

house 10 

Up from the South at break of day 248 

We count the broken lyres that rest 166 

We sat within the farm-house old 125 

What is the little one thinking about ? 195 

When a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad 

earth's aching breast 212 

When descends on the Atlantic . .. 130 

When falls the soldier brave 299 

When Freedom, from her mountain height 25 

When Nature had made all her birds 179 

When o'er the mountain steeps 267 

When the humid shadows hover . 272 

While sauntering through the crowded street .... 280 

Whither, 'midst falling dew 53 

Who first said " false as dreams " ? Not one who saw . 275 

Why sits she thus in solitude ? Her heart 238 

Why thus longing, thus forever sighing 198 

Winged mimic of the woods ! thou motley fool ! . . . 22 

Woodman, spare that tree ! 60 



JAN 1906 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Sept. 2009 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




017 189 246 6 



II 



HRL 

Hi 




